Investigations on the enhanced dye degradation activity of heterogeneous BiFeO3-GdFeO3 nanocomposite photocatalyst

Yathavan Subramanian; Venkatapathy Ramasamy; R J Karthikeyan; Gokul Raj Srinivasan; Durairajan Arulmozhi; Ramesh Kumar Gubendiran; Mohan Sriramalu

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01831

Investigations on the enhanced dye degradation activity of heterogeneous BiFeO₃-GdFeO₃ nanocomposite photocatalyst

Heliyon. 2019 Jun 18;5(6):e01831. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01831. eCollection 2019 Jun.

Authors

Yathavan Subramanian¹, Venkatapathy Ramasamy¹, R J Karthikeyan², Gokul Raj Srinivasan³, Durairajan Arulmozhi⁴, Ramesh Kumar Gubendiran¹, Mohan Sriramalu⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, University College of Engineering Arni, Anna University, India.
² Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee, India.
³ Department of Physics, C. Kandaswami Naidu College for Men, Chennai, India.
⁴ IN-Aveiro, Department of Physics, University of Aveiro, Portugal.
⁵ Department of Physics, S.A. Engineering College, Avadi, Chennai, India.

Abstract

Perovskite types of nanocomposites of BiFeO₃-GdFeO₃ (BFO-GFO) has been synthesized using sol-gel route for the first time. The nanocomposite powders were characterized by powder X-Ray diffraction (PXRD) to confirm the existence of mixed crystallographic phases. EDX analysis on nanocomposites estimates the composition of individual element present in BFO-GFO matrix. The induced strain upon loading GdFeO₃(GFO) in BiFeO₃ (BFO) matrix has been computed with the aid of Williamson -Hall (W-H) plot. Surface morphologies of nanocomposite powders has been studied using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) images. The observed changes in the band gap energies of nanocomposite powders due to the inclusion of GFO has been ascertained from the tauc plots. PL emission of BFO upon loading GFO found to have detected in the IR region due to defect level transition. Finally, the methylene blue dye (MB) degradation characteristics of BFO, GFO and the nanocomposite powders of BFO-GFO have also been studied. The overall results obtained has been discussed in detail.

Keywords: Ceramics; Materials science; Methylene blue dye; Nanocomposites; Nanomaterials; Photocatalysis; Photoluminescence.