Optimization and detailed stability study on Pb doped ceria nanocubes for enhanced photodegradation of several anionic and cationic organic pollutants

Abstract

A series of Pb doped CeO2 nanocubes with seven different Pb loadings (2–12 mol%) were synthesized via modified hydrothermal technique. The prepared samples were characterized by XRD, XPS, FT-IR, TGA, SEM, HR-TEM, EDS and UV–Vis DRS analysis. According to XRD analysis, the crystalline structure of synthesized pure CeO2 and Pb-doped CeO2 samples are cubic structure. The ceria nanocubes showed an increase in amount of oxygen vacancies with increasing the dopant concentrations. When the doping level of Pb is 6 mol%, the optical band gap of Pb-CeO2 is smaller than that of pure CeO2 nanocubes. The HR-TEM results confirms the cubic structure of 6% Pb-CeO2 with average crystallite size of about 15 nm. The photocatalytic ability of Pb-CeO2 catalysts were studied by degrading several anionic and cationic organic pollutants like methylene blue (MB), methylene orange (MO), methylene red (MR), rhodamine B (RhB), reactive blue 160 (RB160), salicylic acid (SA), coumarin and phenol. The 6% Pb-CeO2 nanocubes shows better photocatalytic performance against anionic dyes especially for MB. To find the optimum condition for better photocatalytic performance of 6% Pb-CeO2 nanocubes, the photocatalytic process was conducted in different initial reaction conditions like reaction temperature, catalytic dosage, dye concentration and pH of the reaction solution. The stability and recyclability of 6% Pb-CeO2 photocatalyst was studied by XRD, FT-IR and EDS analysis after 5 cycles of MB degradation. The hydroxyl radical estimation and trapping experiments were conducted to observe the photocatalytic mechanism process in 6% Pb-CeO2 nanocubes. The perfect doping concentration for better organic pollutant degradation by Pb-CeO2 is found to be 6 mol% of Pb.