In this work, an economical and facile method, vacuum deoxidation, is introduced to fabricate oxygen vacancies on ZnO surface.
The visible photoactivity is produced and the UV photoactivity is greatly improved via surface oxygen vacancies for ZnO photocatalyst. It is considered that the concentration of surface oxygen vacancies is controlled by tuning the temperature and the time in the process of vacuum treatment. Oxygen vacancies are formed on the surface of ZnO photocatalyst and no changes in crystal structure.