One-step solution auto-combustion process for the rapid synthesis of crystalline phase iron oxide nanoparticles with improved magnetic and photocatalytic properties

Abstract

We report the solution auto-combustion (AC) process for the rapid synthesis of Fe3O4 nanoparticles derived from the sol–gel (SG) process. The citric acid (CA) and tartaric acid (TA) is used as gelling agents in the SG process, where the citric acid turns into a fuel that combusts the gel and yields a highly magnetic crystalline phase Fe3O4 nanoparticles in one step with an average particle size of 50 nm. In contrast, the citric acid at different concentrations and tartaric acid at any concentrations do not lead to any combustion process and yield amorphous iron oxides. Upon annealing, these CA and TA derived iron oxide samples are turned to crystalline phase α-Fe2O3 particles. In contrast, the as-synthesized AC sample (i.e. Fe3O4) is oxidized to γ-Fe2O3 phase, which is confirmed from their respective XRD, Rietveld refinement and XPS studies. All the synthesized iron oxide phases showed broad visible light absorption. The room temperature M−H hysteresis curves obtained from VSM revealed that the Fe3O4 and α-Fe2O3/γ-Fe2O3 phases exhibit super-paramagnetic and ferromagnetic properties, respectively. The photocatalytic efficiencies of the samples are found to be in the order of Fe3O4 > γ-Fe2O3 > α-Fe2O3 with 98, 87, 79/73% degradation of rhodamine B dye at the end of 3 h and H2 evolution rate over these systems is found to be 2.1, 1.3 and 0.92/0.89 mmol/h/g, respectively under simulated solar light irradiation. The photocatalytic recycle studies demonstrated that all the synthesized photocatalysts possess excellent chemical and photo-stabilities.