Fabrication and characterization of adenine-grafted carbon-modified amorphous ZnO with enhanced catalytic activity

Sustainability has become a countersign and guiding rule for current field of nanocatalysis. Herein, we report a cost-effective, greener, clean, and proficient process for the formation of adenine-grafted carbon-modified amorphous ZnO nanocatalyst (ZnO@AC) derived from garment industry waste (waste cotton cloth). Due to adenine functionality, catalyst provides consistent dispersion of ZnO providing catalytically active sites for the synthesis of pyrano2,3-d]pyrimidines and bis(pyrazol-5-ole) and alters the electron–hole pair recombination without notable mass-transfer limitation. The photocatalytic evaluation of ZnO@AC was performed on methyl orange (MO) dye under UV light and 87.3% degradation efficiency resulted in 75 min. Moreover, the catalyst was recyclable and could be reused up to eight runs, making it more sustainable. The morphology of ZnO@AC remained intact with the slight agglomeration of ZnO nanoparticles (nps) after eight recoveries according to the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image of the used catalyst.