Solar-light-driven and magnetically recoverable doped nano-ferrite: An ideal photocatalyst for water purification applications

Abstract

Semi-conductive photocatalysts have received a lot of interest for water treatment applications. This is due to their high efficiency and cost-effective nature. The challenge for material scientists is to design a semi-conductive material-based photocatalyst capable of protecting the environment and cleaning up hazardous waste water. The current study is centered on developing nanostructured Mn-doped cobalt ferrite as a photocatalytic material that is magnetically recyclable, active in visible light, stable at high temperatures, and has high conductivity. Then, using XRD, EDX, FT-IR, and SEM examination, the crystal structure, chemical composition, chemical functionality, and morphology of the wet-chemically synthesized undoped and Mn-doped ferrite samples were compared. Through the completion of TGA, I-V, UV–Vis, impedance, and transient photocurrent experiments, the requisite characteristics of the as-prepared ferrite materials, such as thermal stability, electrical conductivity, light-harvesting capability, charge transport performance, and charge separation efficiency, were also investigated. We used undoped and Mn-doped cobalt ferrite materials for the visible-light-driven crystal violet (CV) dye mineralization. However, the Mn-doped cobalt ferrite sample did a pretty good job as a photocatalyst and mineralized 95.8% CV dye (10 ppm) in just 40 min at a rate of 0.058 min−1. The doped ferrite sample was completely recovered from the photocatalytic system after each recyclability test due to its magnetic characteristics. Even after the four consecutive cycles, it maintained 97.2% of its original photocatalytic activity. The current work looks into the possibility of combining a semi-conductive catalyst's surface, magnetic, mechanical, and optical functions to clean up wastewater cost-effectively.