Pristine and cerium‐doped zinc oxides with a different dopant concentration between 1 and 5% were fabricated using the hydrothermal method. Prepared materials show direct bandgaps of comparable values. Cerium‐doped materials show UV‐Vis spectra with broad tails toward the visible light range. Pure zinc oxide displays the flower‐like form, while cerium‐doped materials possess rod‐shaped morphologies. The materials were tested for the degradation performance of methylene blue under visible light irradiation. To elucidate the difference in their performance, further measurements and experiments were conducted. Overall, 3%‐cerium doped zinc oxide shows the greatest photocatalytic performance. This is possibly attributed to its rod shape with good uniformity and to the enrichment of oxygen vacancies in its surface layers. Finally, trapping experiments reveal that positive holes and hydroxyl radicals were the predominant active species during the photocatalytic degradation process.

中文翻译：

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纯和铈掺杂的氧化锌：可见光照射下水热合成和亚甲基蓝的光催化降解

使用水热法制备了掺杂浓度为1％至5％的原始和铈掺杂的氧化锌。制备的材料显示出可比值的直接带隙。掺铈的材料显示出可见光范围内具有宽尾巴的UV-Vis光谱。纯的氧化锌呈花状，而铈掺杂的材料则呈棒状。测试了材料在可见光照射下的亚甲基蓝降解性能。为了阐明它们的性能差异，进行了进一步的测量和实验。总体而言，掺铈3％的氧化锌表现出最大的光催化性能。这可能归因于其具有良好均匀性的棒状形状以及其表面层中氧空位的富集。最后，