Talk:Zinc oxide

UV absorber or UV blocker?
The article currently has a header "UV absorber" - but the anti-UV action of Zinc oxide would seem to me to be due to its reflective properties, which give it its white color - and thus wouldn't it be better to retitle this section "UV reflector" or "UV blocker"?Wwallacee (talk) 11:50, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It's somewhat surprising that this article doesn't say anything about the optical properties of zinc oxide crystals. However if you look at figure 4 of this paper, you can see that below 375 nm the absorbance rises dramatically.  (The cutoff for UV is normally taken to be 400 nm.)  So it looks like it does actually absorb rather than reflect UV, except for a small part just slightly below the visible range. Looie496 (talk) 12:58, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Why we should never (or almost never) use primary refs
Search of ZnO by CAS# 1314-13-2. refine for "English":702 references More later. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:03, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
 * 224139 references
 * refine for "nano": 56608 references
 * refine "Reviews": 985 references
 * refine for 2010 or later: 481 references

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Update on nanophase ZnO literature
In a Chemical Abstracts Search today, "zinc oxide" gives 274,442 hits, 69,999 of which mention "nano," 1198 are reviews, 552 reviews since 2012. Here are highly cited reviews that seem promising for this article: --Smokefoot (talk) 17:48, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Djurisic, Aleksandra B.; Chen, Xinyi; Leung, Yu Hang; Ng, Alan Man Ching "ZnO nanostructures: growth, properties and applications" Journal of Materials Chemistry (2012), 22(14), 6526-6535.
 * Arya, Sunil K.; Saha, Shibu; Ramirez-Vick, Jaime E.; Gupta, Vinay; Bhansali, Shekhar; Singh, Surinder P. "Recent advances in ZnO nanostructures and thin films for biosensor applications: Review" Analytica Chimica Acta (2012), 737, 1-21.
 * Anta, Juan A.; Guillen, Elena; Tena-Zaera, Ramon "ZnO-Based Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells" Journal of Physical Chemistry C (2012), 116(21), 11413-11425.

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Add GHS Pictogram
Hi, Just wondering if it would be appropriate to add the GHS pictogram (GHS09) for Zinc Oxide to the Chembox on the side? Zinc Oxide is toxic to aquatic life, and I did not know this until I researched about "disposing of thermal paste"

I have added a note under safety about its toxicity to aquatic life, but it is not mentioned anywhere else, oddly.

Thanks. C0n0r97 (talk) 10:59, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Misleading safety concern
Under Safety heading .. Zinc Oxide is toxic to aquatic life.[109]

Non Nano zinc oxide above 150 (nm) observes no acute toxicity in marine life.

The statement implies that all zinc oxide is toxic and the reference used is extremely ambiguous and problematic as it provides no indication or scale of the oxides used for classification.

This is at best factually incorrect.

Simon Ilett (talk) 08:15, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It does seem to be inaccurately worded, so I have removed it for now. If someone wants to reword the statement more precisely and then re-add it, that would be fine.  -- Ed (Edgar181) 11:12, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Split off pigment section
The topic of zinc white's use as a pigment is vast and notable. Kuhn, cited in this article, includes a bibliography of 50+ other sources on the topic. I would suggest treating it as a separate article. A standalone article about the pigment would allow for discussion of many subtopics discussed in published sources (history of the pigment; notable paintings in which it is used; methods of identification in paintings; conservation issues). You can see my draft of a stub for the article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Zinc_white. Owunsch (talk) 16:41, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Pinging WP:CHEM, WP:CHEMICALS, WP:VISUALARTS, and WP:WPCOL AngusW🐶🐶F  ( bark  •  sniff ) 17:35, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. The parent zinc oxide article is already long, in addition to the reasons given above. --Smokefoot (talk) 20:13, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * neutral : this needs to follow the pattern in, which unfortunately is a bit undefined. Some of the articles are split into chemical and pigment (Minium (pigment) vs. Lead(II,IV) oxide). Some are singular and based on the chemical (e.g. titanium oxide) with a subsection on the pigment. Some are singular and based on the pigment (e.g. Prussian blue). In the case of Aureolin and Potassium hexanitritocobaltate(III), both of them are stubs and I'd probably merge those together. I could support a split of zinc oxide if zinc white was at least going to start as more than a stub, but then do we need to be consistent with titanium oxide and magnesium dioxide? Ultimately, I would put this decision to WP:COLOR, but they/we don't seem to be interested in arriving at a consensus when it comes to how to define colors and what deserves its own article. Curran919 (talk) 20:25, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I dont see why "this" needs to follow anyone's particular recipe from color people, pigment people, or whatever. Just get a vote from folks that know the technology (vs the procedural enthusiasts, they often suppress any initiative).  The pattern of Wiki articles on chemicals vs the apps of individual is diverse and ever-evolving. Assuming that the content is there, the drivers are the stamina and knowledge of the editor that leads the split and does the dirty work.  IMHO.--Smokefoot (talk) 21:19, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Up to OP to be bold. Up to a wikiproject to set guidelines and clean up the disjointed mess that is color articles. There is value in consistency. OP was kind enough to use this post to start a conversation on one of my related initiatives in WP:COLOR. Curran919 (talk) 21:39, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks @Curran919 and @Smokefoot. I agree with @Curran919 that it would be good to have some consistency in the way pigments are discussed relative to chemicals. In general, I would favor separate articles. The titanium oxide article, for example, is enormous, which means that information about the pigment gets buried; it also discourages further development of the pigment section, since it would get unwieldy. In both that case and in this one, I would be happy to lead the effort to develop the pigment articles. In fact, I am teaching a course this coming semester on the History of Color, which includes a Wikipedia assignment. I would like to assign both of those articles to my students for development. Owunsch (talk) 22:02, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * With all due respect (truly): "it would be good to have some consistency in the way pigments are discussed relative to chemicals. In general, I would favor separate articles." Dont wait for consistency.  The chem articles are often quite good, but if one seeks consistency, one must take the initiative.  It would be great if you tackled titanium dioxide, spinning off the pigment portion. --Smokefoot (talk) 22:37, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @Owunsch support then! You hit me right in the didactics ;-) Curran919 (talk) 08:48, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
 * , let's have the discussion play out for this one. The OP should prepare other pigment drafts in the meantime and I can AFC approve those when this settles. AngusW🐶🐶F  ( bark  •  sniff ) 04:04, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks @AngusWOOF and @Curran919. Should I start a parallel discussion on the talk page for titanium dioxide and any other chemical compound whose corresponding pigment I propose splitting off? Or would that be redundant? Owunsch (talk) 13:20, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @Owunsch I think redundant. Just reference this conversation in the edit summary when making the other splits. Curran919 (talk) 13:28, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for everyone's input. Here are the drafts I created for lead white and titanium white (in addition to my original draft on zinc white). My students can develop the articles much more extensively in the coming months. I would be happy to go ahead and do the splits now, but it sounds like @AngusWOOF wants to give this conversation a little more time to unfold. I will let @AngusWOOF decide when it's settled. I also welcome suggestions for other pigment articles in need of development. I will have 20 eager students, each working on their own pigment. Owunsch (talk) 23:31, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Draft:Zinc_white has been sitting in AfC purgatory for a couple of weeks now. Would @AngusWOOF or another reviewer be willing to take a look at it? Everyone in this conversation seemed to support the split, and the discussion seems to have played out. Since I wrote the draft, I don't think I'm eligible to take it out of AfC (if I understand correctly). Once that split is done, I can go ahead and do the lead white and titanium white splits. Owunsch (talk) 14:39, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Support Makes sense, just remember to keep a short section here. We say 'split' but we mean 'branch'. Regarding the draft, it would be interesting to see some discussion of zinc vs lead vs titanium. I'm aware that you need a lot more titanium to get the same level of whiteness as lead, which hampered its introduction. Lead is preferable from the point of view of CO2 emissions. I have no idea where zinc fits into that (but I am interested to hear about it). --Project Osprey (talk) 01:34, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Update on publications cited on ZnO
Its difficult to interpret these results, but one fact is that many publications describe the materials:
 * 470,010 publications (patents, reports,..) on "zinc oxide" are in the Chemical Abstracts database
 * 5545 of these publications are reviews or books (ChemAbs seems not great at finding books). These articles meet Wikipedia's ideal of WP:SECONDARY and WP:TERTIARY
 * 4685 of these reviews/books have appeared in the preceding 20 years, i.e. a few appear every week.

The most cited reviews appearing since 2012 are listed below. None are cited in the current Wikipedia article.
 * 1) Sirelkhatim, A.; Mahmud, S.; Seeni, A.; Kaus, N. H. M.; Ann, L. C.; Bakhori, S. K. M.; Hasan, H.; Mohamad, D. Review on zinc oxide nanoparticles: antibacterial activity and toxicity mechanism. Nano-Micro Lett. 2015, 7, 219-242. doi 10.1007/s40820-015-0040-x
 * 2) Yang, J.; Wang, D.; Han, H.; Li, C. Roles of cocatalysts in photocatalysis and photoelectrocatalysis. Acc. Chem. Res. 2013, 46, 1900-1909. doi 10.1021/ar300227e
 * 3) Lee, K. M.; Lai, C. W.; Ngai, K. S.; Juan, J. C. Recent developments of zinc oxide based photocatalyst in water treatment technology: A review. Water Res. 2016, 88, 428-448.doi 10.1016/j.watres.2015.09.045
 * 4) Kolodziejczak-Radzimska, A.; Jesionowski, T. Zinc oxide-from synthesis to application: a review. Materials 2014, 7, 2833-2881, 2849. doi 10.3390/ma7042833
 * 5) Miller, D. R.; Akbar, S. A.; Morris, P. A. Nanoscale metal oxide-based heterojunctions for gas sensing: A review. Sens. Actuators, B 2014, 204, 250-272.doi 10.1016/j.snb.2014.07.074
 * 6) Ong, C. B.; Ng, L. Y.; Mohammad, A. W. A review of ZnO nanoparticles as solar photocatalysts: Synthesis, mechanisms and applications. Renewable Sustainable Energy Rev. 2018, 81, 536-551. doi 10.1016/j.rser.2017.08.020
 * 7) Lang, X.; Chen, X.; Zhao, J. Heterogeneous visible light photocatalysis for selective organic transformations. Chem. Soc. Rev. 2014, 43, 473-486. doi 10.1039/C3CS60188A

My own interpretation of these findings is that the article may not be presenting a balanced overview. Possibly parts of the article result from self-promotion or editors lacking expertise or aiming to push a particular perspective. Who knows, but the literature is huge and the top stuff is unrecognized.--Smokefoot (talk) 23:47, 31 December 2022 (UTC)