Degradation of cefadroxil drug by newly designed solar light responsive alcoholic template-based lanthanum ferrite nanoparticles

Ammara Nazir; Muhammad Imran; Farah Kanwal; Shoomaila Latif; Ayesha Javaid; Tak H Kim; Grzegorz Boczkaj; Ashwag Shami; Hafiz Iqbal

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2023.116241

Degradation of cefadroxil drug by newly designed solar light responsive alcoholic template-based lanthanum ferrite nanoparticles

Environ Res. 2023 Aug 15;231(Pt 3):116241. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.116241. Epub 2023 May 25.

Authors

Ammara Nazir¹, Muhammad Imran², Farah Kanwal³, Shoomaila Latif⁴, Ayesha Javaid¹, Tak H Kim⁵, Grzegorz Boczkaj⁶, Ashwag Shami⁷, Hafiz Iqbal⁸

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Inorganic Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of the Punjab, Lahore, 54000, Pakistan.
² Centre for Inorganic Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of the Punjab, Lahore, 54000, Pakistan. Electronic address: imran.hons@pu.edu.pk.
³ Centre for Physical Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of the Punjab, Lahore, 54000, Pakistan.
⁴ School of Physical Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore, 54000, Pakistan.
⁵ School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, QLD, 4111, Australia.
⁶ Department of Sanitary Engineering, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Gdańsk University of Technology, 11/12 Narutowicza Str., Gdańsk 80-233, Poland; EkoTech Center, Gdańsk University of Technology, G. Narutowicza St. 11/12, Gdansk, 80-233, Poland.
⁷ Department of Biology, College of Sciences, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, 11671, Saudi Arabia.
⁸ Department of Biology, College of Sciences, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, 11671, Saudi Arabia. Electronic address: HAIqbal@pnu.edu.sa.

PMID: 37244493
DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.116241

Abstract

In this work, lanthanum ferrite nanoparticles were synthesized via a simple co-precipitation method. Two different templates, namely sorbitol and mannitol, were used in this synthesis to tune the optical, structural, morphological, and photocatalytic properties of lanthanum ferrite. The synthesized lanthanum ferrite-sorbitol (LFOCo-So) and lanthanum ferrite-mannitol (LFOCo-Mo) were investigated through Ultraviolet-Visible (UV-Vis), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR), Raman, Scanning Electron Microscopy-Energy Dispersive X-ray (SEM-EDX), and photoluminescence (PL) techniques to study the effects of the templates on the tunable properties of lanthanum ferrite nanoparticles. The UV-Vis study revealed a remarkably small bandgap (2.09 eV) of LFOCo-So compared to the LFOCo-Mo having a band gap of 2.46 eV. XRD analysis revealed a single-phased structure of LFOCo-So, whereas LFOCo-Mo showed different phases. The calculated crystallite sizes of LFOCo-So and LFOCo-Mo were 22 nm and 39 nm, respectively. FTIR spectroscopy indicated the characteristics of metal-oxygen vibrations of perovskites in both lanthanum ferrite (LFO) nanoparticles, whereas a slight shifting of Raman scattering modes in LFOCo-Mo in contrast to LFOCo-So showed the octahedral distortion of the perovskite by changing the template. SEM micrographs indicated porous particles of lanthanum ferrite with LFOCo-So being more uniformly distributed, and EDX confirmed the stoichiometric ratios of the lanthanum, iron, and oxygen in the fabricated lanthanum ferrite. The high-intensity green emission in the photoluminescence spectrum of LFOCo-So indicated more prominent oxygen vacancies than LFOCo-Mo. The photocatalytic efficiency of synthesized LFOCo-So and LFOCo-Mo was investigated against cefadroxil drug under solar light irradiation. At optimized photocatalytic conditions, LFOCo-So showed higher degradation efficiency of 87% in only 20 min than LFOCo-Mo having photocatalytic activity of 81%. The excellent recyclability of the LFOCo-So reflected that it could be reused without affecting photocatalytic efficiency. These findings showed that sorbitol is a useful template for the lanthanum ferrite particles imparting outstanding features, enabling it to be used as an efficient photocatalyst for environmental remediation.

Keywords: Cefadroxil; Degradation mechanism; Environmental remediation; Kinetic; Lanthanum ferrite; Photocatalyst; Reusability.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Cefadroxil
Lanthanum* / chemistry
Nanoparticles* / chemistry

Substances

ferrite
Lanthanum
Cefadroxil
perovskite