Lanthanum/Cadmium/Polyaniline bimetallic nanocomposite for the photodegradation of organic pollutant

Abstract

In the present research paper, La/Cd/Polyaniline nanocomposite (La/Cd/PANI BNC) was prepared by simple reverse micelles micro-emulsion technique. The nanocomposite of La/Cd bimetallic nanoparticles with polyaniline is fabricated using graft copolymerization method. The materials were well characterized using various modern instrumentations such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The SEM micrographs clearly revealed the granular and spherical structural morphology of La/Cd BNPs, whereas La/Cd/PANI (La/Cd/PANI BNC) had needle-shaped crystal embedded with spherical La/Cd BNPs. The transmission electron micrographs (TEM) of the bare La/Cd BNPs showed that most of the bare La/Cd particles were 20 nm in diameter. The optical band gap of La/Cd bimetallic nanoparticles was found to be 3.04 eV which lies in semiconductor range. Thus, materials could find applications in semiconductor devices and spintronic. The incorporation of bimetallic nanoparticles into polyaniline matrix led to further lowering of band gap to 2.77 eV. The materials were also explored for their photocatalytic behavior against toxic organic dye in water system. Both the samples successfully degraded the methylene Blue dye in presence of sunlight. However, La/Cd/PANI BNC was more effective in the removal of dye with a whopping 92.14 % degradation achieved in 5 h.