Hydrothermal preparation of magnetic recyclable In-doped MoO3/SrFe12O19 ternary nanocomposites with enhanced visible-light-driven photocatalytic performance

Abstract

SrFe12O19 as a novel magnetic matrix has drawn increasing attention in photocatalysis. In the current study, a novel magnetically recoverable In-MoO3/SrFe12O19 ternary composite photocatalyst was fabricated with the hydrothermal method, and the photocatalytic activity was evaluated by degrading rhodamine B (RhB) solution through simulated solar irradiation. The results demonstrated that the outstanding degradation rate of RhB (96.5 %) could be achieved within 70 min when the mass ratio of both doped In and SrFe12O19 in the ternary composite photocatalyst was 5 % (5-IMS-5). The enhancement of the photocatalytic degradation performance was mainly related to the self-sensitization of RhB, the magnetic field effect of SrFe12O19, and the introduction of impurity energy levels by In doping. More importantly, the degradation rate of RhB by 5-IMS-5 was still up to 90.8 % after 4 times of recycling, verifying that the prepared ternary composite sample has good recyclability and stability. This study proves a novel ternary composite photocatalyst that can be used for organic wastewater treatment, and its photocatalytic degradation mechanism provides great reference significance for the synthesis of other SrFe12O19-based magnetic semiconductor photocatalysts.