Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Chemical Engineering Area, CSIR-Central Leather Research Institute, Adyar, Chennai 600020

Abstract

Heterogeneous semiconductor nanomaterials are widely employed nowadays as efficient photocatalysts for selective
organic transformation reactions. A co-precipitation technique was employed for the preparation of ZnO doped
dysprosium oxide from the respectivemetal nitrates and characterization studies were conductedby FT-IR, X-Ray
Differaction, UV-Visible-DRS and FE-SEM analysis. XRD showed the prepared nanomaterial to be in a nano range with
high crystallinity. The particles possesed a spherical morphology and of the order of 40-50 nm(particle size) as
evidenced from FE-SEM analysis. From theUV-Visible-DRS analysis the band gap energy was calculated as 3.15 eV.
The synthesizedZnO doped dysprosium oxide was employed as a photocatalyst under UV light irradiation for selective
organic transformation reaction. Quinones especially benzoquinones are a class of compounds which forms a basic
structural skeleton for various natural compounds. They are widely employed asa precursor for natural products
synthesis. Herein we report the synthesis of N-phenyl-p-benzoquinonimine from diphenylamine by employing ZnO
doped dysprosium oxide as a photocatalyst under UV light irradiation in ethanol. Thin Layer Chromatography was used
to check the progress of the reaction. Optimization studies for the reaction parameters were conducted systematically
.

Keywords

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