A simple electrochemical method followed by impregnation was employed to prepare a coral-like zinc oxide catalyst loaded on mesostructured silica nanoparticles (ZnO/MSN). The introduction of zinc species onto a silica framework was found to form an interaction between the host and support material. XRD analysis suggested the presence of zinc on the internal pore walls of MSN. FE-SEM and TEM analyses displayed nanorods, nanoparticles and coral-like shapes of ZnO, MSN and ZnO/MSN, respectively. Si-29 NMR and FTIR results showed that desilication occurred in the silica framework of the MSN accompanied by isomorphous substitution of Zn2+ cations to form an active species Zn-O-Si bond. The photocatalytic activity of the ZnO/MSN was tested by decolorizing methyl orange (MO). It was found that increasing the ZnO loading led to a higher recombination rate of photoinduced electron-hole pairs, which resulted in decreased photocatalytic activity. The highest decolorization rate was obtained using 1 g L-1 of 5 wt% ZnO/MSN with an optimum dosage of 3.06 x 10(-2) mM MO after 8 h contact time at pH 2 under UV irradiation. A kinetic study demonstrated that the photocatalytic reaction followed the pseudo first-order model. The photocatalyst was still stable after five cycling runs with a small amount of Zn was leached (<3.0%). (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.