Facile fabrication of porous La doped ZnO granular nanocrystallites and their catalytic evaluation towards thermal decomposition of ammonium perchlorate

Highlights: • Mesoporous, granular nanocrystallites, Wrutzite structure for pure and La doped ZnO. • Band gap energy were reduced by La in doped materials. • Higher La content showed higher crystallite size, particle size, lower surface area. • Two stage decomposition of AP turns single stage in presence of pure and doped ZnO. • Lowering in HTD of AP by 105 °C using ZnO which further reduced by La doping. -- Abstract: The present article expresses synthesis, characterization and catalytic activity of pure and La doped ZnO (La-ZnO) towards thermal decomposition of Ammonium Perchlorate (AP). The catalytic materials (La-ZnO) with 0–1.00% of doped La were synthesized by simple co-precipitation method and thoroughly characterized by several spectroscopic techniques like FT-IR, XRD, UV–Visible, PL, SEM-EDS and BET analysis. The XRD pattern of synthesized materials displayed wurtzite ZnO structure. The SEM images of the materials showed granular morphology where gradual increase in particle size and crystallite size was observed to be increased with increase in doped La concentration. The BET surface area of the materials was 28.203 to 15.830 m²/g and exhibited mesoporous nature. In catalytic studies for thermal decomposition of AP, the pure ZnO catalyst offered single stage decomposition of AP along with lowering high-thermal decomposition (HTD) temperature of AP by 105 ^OC. However, La doped ZnO showed slightly lower activity due to promotion of NO formation in oxidation of ammonia generated on initial decomposition of AP and decrease in BET surface area.