Statistical Parameters Effects on Photocatalytic Degradation of Rhodamine 6G Dye with Hexagonal Zinc Oxide Nanorods Synthesized via Solution Process RIZWAN WAHAB 1,3 and FARHEEN KHAN 2 1.—Department of Zoology, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia. 2.—Department of Chemistry, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh 202002, U.P., India. 3.—e-mail: rwahab@ksu.edu.sa Hexagonal-shaped zinc oxide nanorods (HNRs) were synthesized via a wet chemical solution process at low temperature in short refluxing time. The structural and morphological properties of the obtained products were char- acterized by x-ray diffraction pattern and field emission scanning electron microscopy. The photocatalytic degradation process significantly shows enhanced activity of ZnO-HNRs under UV–Vis light in presence of rhodamine 6G dye (RhB). The effective concentration of ZnO-HNRs shows degradation process of RhB dye and was investigated via standard analytical techniques, optimized and validated by statistical analytical parameters. The statistical constraints give necessary information for establishing analytical procedures to ensure the quality and purity of the results. The absorption spectra were recorded at maximum absorbance k max 470 nm, 520 nm, and 550 nm for ZnO- HNRs, RhB and ZnO-HNRs-RhB, respectively. Satisfactory data were ob- tained from UV–Vis spectroscopy, providing more reliable values against many factual variable factors such as concentration, volume, pH, time and temperature, etc. Key words: Hexagonal nanorods, photocatalytic activity, statistical calculation, rhodamine 6G INTRODUCTION Dyes and their related organic compounds are carcinogenic and are dangerous for the environment and human health, which causes several problems. Recently, one of the most demanding environmental issues has been a safe environment requiring clean fresh water from contaminated water. 1–3 Photo- degradation is one of the best deactivation processes applied in water treatment for controlling the environmental problems by using photocatalytic nanomaterials/agents. 4 Thus, degradation/decom- position of dyes have been designated by various physical, chemical and biological methods such as coagulation, flocculation, activated carbon adsorp- tion and reverse osmosis, but the photocatalysis degradation process is an advanced oxidation pro- cess which shows great performance under UV–Vis light. 5 Over a large variety of nanomaterials, metal oxides are especially involved in the photodegrada- tion process because these materials are environ- mentally friendly and more efficient, with large surface areas, high reactivity, high photosensitivity, higher absorption capacity, good quantum effi- ciency, non-toxicity and wide band gaps, and attract great attention in dye degradation fields. 6 For water purification, adsorption and photodegradation are more efficient techniques applied for the removal of toxic organic compounds and dyes which strongly depend on ZnO nano-adsorbents/ZnO-photo- catalyst. 5,6 Besides their photocatalytic properties, zinc oxide nanostructures exhibit wide applications in various fields such solar cells, chemical, bio and gas sensors, piezoelectric devices, light-emitting diodes, sun screens, cosmetics, biological products, (Received June 27, 2014; accepted August 26, 2014; published online September 13, 2014) Journal of ELECTRONIC MATERIALS, Vol. 43, No. 11, 2014 DOI: 10.1007/s11664-014-3397-6 Ó 2014 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society 4266