Fabrication of Self-Assembled BiFeO3/CeO2 Nanocatalytic Materials for Efficient Catalytic Dye Degradation

Lin Li; Qi Li; Dongqing Wang; Yubo Zhang; Fei Li; Yaru Zhang; Tifeng Jiao

doi:10.3390/nano13182545

Fabrication of Self-Assembled BiFeO₃/CeO₂ Nanocatalytic Materials for Efficient Catalytic Dye Degradation

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2023 Sep 12;13(18):2545. doi: 10.3390/nano13182545.

Authors

Lin Li¹, Qi Li¹, Dongqing Wang¹, Yubo Zhang¹, Fei Li¹, Yaru Zhang¹, Tifeng Jiao¹

Affiliation

¹ State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology, Hebei Key Laboratory of Applied Chemistry, Hebei Key Laboratory of Nano-Biotechnology, Hebei Key Laboratory of Heavy Metal Deep-Remediation in Water and Resource Reuse, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, China.

Abstract

The catalytic treatment of wastewater serves as an effective way to solve the problem of water pollution, in which non-homogeneous Fenton catalysts are widely used. However, the activity enhancement of non-homogeneous Fenton catalysts still remains a great challenge. Herein, self-assembled BiFeO₃/CeO₂ nanocatalytic materials with different molar ratios were successfully fabricated by a suspension blending method, following which the structure evolution was determined by various characterizations. The catalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB), rhodamine B (RhB), and saffron T (ST) were performed over the BiFeO₃/CeO₂ nanocatalytic materials. It was found that the 0.2BiFeO₃:0.8CeO₂ nanocatalytic materials exhibited an 80.8% degradation efficiency for RhB. The 0.6BiFeO₃:0.4CeO₂ nanocatalytic materials reached 81.1% and 48.7% for ST and MB, respectively. The BiFeO₃/CeO₂ nanocatalytic materials also showed a good stability during several cycles. The combination of CeO₂ with BiFeO₃ led to an enhanced activity for dye degradation, probably due to the electron transfer from ≡Fe²⁺ to ≡Ce⁴⁺. This study provides a new approach to dye degradation by using Fenton catalytic systems.

Keywords: BiFeO3; CeO2; dye degradation; nanocatalytic materials; non-homogeneous Fenton catalysts.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 22072127, 22208281, 22372143), the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (No. B2021203016), the Science and Technology Project of Hebei Education Department (No. ZD2022147), and the Special Project for Local Science and Technology Development Guided by the Central Government of China (Nos. 216Z1301G, 226Z1401G, 236Z1201G, 236Z1401G, 236Z1206G).