Zinc acetate as precursor

a series of ZnO films were deposited on glass slide using sol-gel technique by altering the complexants (monoethanolamine

diethanolamine

triethanolamine). The phase composition

surface morphology

optical absorption property

surface chemical state

et al. was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD)

atomic force microscope (AFM)

UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and photoluminescence (PL). The degradation of methylene blue impregnated on ZnO films were used to evaluate the photocatalytic activity of the three kinds of catalyst. The results showed that ZnO thin films prepared with monothanolmine showed excellent c-axis orientation

the main reason was considered as the shorter grain diffusion length. The higher phtocatalytic activity of ZnO films prepared with diethanolamine caused by relatively better optical absorption property and many oxygen defects.