Sol-gel synthesis of DyCrO3 and 10% Fe-doped DyCrO3 nanoparticles with enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production abilities

Ragib Ahsan; Avijit Mitra; Saleh Omar; Md Ziaur Rahman Khan; M A Basith

doi:10.1039/c8ra01585f

Sol-gel synthesis of DyCrO₃ and 10% Fe-doped DyCrO₃ nanoparticles with enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production abilities

RSC Adv. 2018 Apr 17;8(26):14258-14267. doi: 10.1039/c8ra01585f.

Authors

Ragib Ahsan^{1

2}, Avijit Mitra^{1

2}, Saleh Omar^{1

2}, Md Ziaur Rahman Khan¹, M A Basith²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology Dhaka-1205 Bangladesh.
² Department of Physics, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology Dhaka-1000 Bangladesh mabasith@phy.buet.ac.bd.

Abstract

DyCrO₃ and 10% Fe-doped DyCrO₃ nanoparticles have been synthesized using a sol-gel method to investigate their performance in photocatalytic hydrogen production from water. The synthesized nanoparticles have been characterized by performing X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and UV-visible spectrophotometric measurements. In addition, field emission scanning electron microscopy has been performed to observe their size and shape. The Fe-doped DyCrO₃ nanoparticles show a significantly smaller band gap of 2.45 eV compared to the band gap of 2.82 eV shown by the DyCrO₃ nanoparticles. The Fe-doped DyCrO₃ nanoparticles show better photocatalytic activity in the degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) compared to the photocatalytic activity shown by both the DyCrO₃ and Degussa P25 titania nanoparticles. The recycling and reuse of Fe-doped DyCrO₃ four times for the photo-degradation of RhB shows that Fe-doped DyCrO₃ is a stable and reusable photocatalyst. To evaluate the extent of the photocatalytic hydrogen production ability of the synthesized nanoparticles, a theoretical model has been developed to determine their "absorptance", a measure of the ability to absorb photons. Finally, 10% Fe-doped DyCrO₃ proves itself to be an efficient photocatalyst as it demonstrated three times greater hydrogen production than Degussa P25.