| Summary: | Herein, we report a micro-plasma assisted solvothermal synthesis and characterization of zinc oxide nanosheets (ZnO-NSs) and their application for the removal of Cr<sup>6+</sup> ion from aqueous solution. The morphological investigations by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) confirmed the high-density growth of nanosheets with the typical sizes in the range of 145.8–320.25 nm. The typical surface area of the synthesized ZnO-NSs, observed by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), was found to be 948 m<sup>2</sup>/g. The synthesized ZnO-NSs were used as efficient absorbent for the removal of Cr<sup>6+</sup> ion from aqueous solution. Various parameters such as pH, contact time, amount of adsorbate and adsorbent on the removal efficiency of Cr<sup>6+</sup> ion was optimized and presented in this paper. At optimized conditions, the highest value for removal was 87.1% at pH = 2 while the calculated maximum adsorption capacity was ~87.37 mg/g. The adsorption isotherm data were found to be best fitted to Temkin adsorption isotherm and the adsorption process followed the pseudo-first-order kinetics. Furthermore, the toxicity of ZnO-NSs were also examined against fibroblast cells, which show favorable results and proved that it can be used for wastewater treatment.
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