Room Temperature Ferromagnetism of Magnetically Recyclable Photocatalyst of Cu1−x Mn x Fe2O4-TiO2 (0.0 ≤ x ≤ 0.5) Nanocomposites

Abstract

Magnetically recyclable spinel Cu1−xMnxFe2O4 (0.0 ≤ x ≤ 0.5) ferrite nanophotocatalysts were synthesized by a simple one-pot microwave combustion method using glycine as the fuel. The synthesis process only took a few minutes to obtain CuFe2O4 nanopowders. The formation of nanocrystalline single-phase cubic spinel structure was confirmed by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) and selected area electron diffraction pattern (SAED) analyses. The surface morphology of the samples consists of nearly spherical shaped nanoparticles (NPs) with agglomeration, which was confirmed by high-resolution scanning electron microscopy (HR-SEM) and high resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) analyses. The optical band gap energy (E g) was confirmed by UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectrum (DRS) study, and the E g of undoped CuFe2O4 sample is 2.39 eV and it is increased from 2.51–2.81 eV with increasing the amount of Mn2+ content (x = 0.1–0.5), due to the decrease of particle size. The magnetic hysteresis (M– H) curve showed ferromagnetic behavior for all compositions. The magnetization (M s) of the samples monotonically increased with increasing Mn content x = 0.0–0.5. Smaller values of coercivity showed soft magnetic nature of Cu1−xMnxFe2O4 NPs. The photocatalytic degradation (PCD) of 4-chlorophenol (4-CP) under visible light using the spinel CuFe2O4 catalysts shows poor activity. Therefore, the present study leads to enhance the photocatalytic (PC) activity of spinel Cu1−xMnxFe2O4 NPs with the addition of TiO2 catalyst using the PCD of 4-CP under visible light. It was found that the coupled Cu1−xMnxFe2O4-TiO2 nanocomposite (NCs) photocatalysts exhibit excellent PC activity than that of Cu1−xMnxFe2O4 and TiO2 catalysts. The sample Cu0.5Mn0.5Fe2O4-TiO2 NCs showed greater performance than the other NCs. The enhanced PC ability of Cu1−xMnxFe2O4-TiO2 NCs could be ascribed to the interconnected heterojunction of spinel Cu1−xMnxFe2O4 and TiO2 catalysts.