Zinc sulfide nanoparticles template by bacterial cellulose and their optical properties

Spherical zinc sulfide (ZnS) nanoparticles dispersed on bacterial cellulose (BC) nanofibers homogeneously were successfully fabricated through in situ precipitation method using BC as template and explored the formation mechanism. The structure and properties were characterized by Fourier transform infrared, X‐ray diffractometer, FESEM, and so on. The results demonstrated that the nanoparticles were sphalerite structure ZnS and the size increased with the increase of the zinc precursor concentrations. Moreover, a high photocatalytic activity (92%) for degradation of methyl orange was observed and the photoluminescence spectra of the nanocomposites exhibited a blue emission band centered at 468 nm. The flexible BC membrane carried of ZnS nanoparticles might be a promising candidate in the application fields of fluorescence and photo‐catalysis. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014 , 131, 40874.