Structural transition and enhanced magnetic, optical and photocatalytic properties of novel Ce–Ni co-doped BiFeO3 nanoparticles

Abstract

Bi1-xCexFe1-xNixO3 (x = 0%, 4%, 6% and 8%) samples were synthesized using sol-gel method to study strategically the influence of Ce–Ni co-doping on structural, vibrational, magnetic, optical and photocatalytic properties utilizing various techniques. XRD showed that whole samples crystallized in single-phase as well as revealed a huge lattice distortion with rising Ce–Ni co-substitution content. A structural phase change from rhombohedral to orthorhombic occurred at the co-substitution sample with x = 8%, confirmed by XRD and the Rietveld refinement as well as Raman analysis. EDS analysis evidenced the existence of Bi, Fe, Ce as well as Ni concentrations in the co-substitution samples with stoichiometric proportion. Crystallinity is noted to be raised when Ce–Ni is co-substitution in BiFeO3 (BFO). Ce–Ni co-doped in BiFeO3 significantly induced improvement of ferromagnetic property, which was shown by the drastic rising with a maximum saturation (Ms) magnetization values of 2.741 emu/g. The optical energy bandgap was sharply reduced with the Ce–Ni co-substitution concentration. It was found that Ce3+ and Ni2+ co-substitution enormously impacted the photocatalytic efficiency of undoped BFO. Furthermore, with the increase of Ce–Ni co-doping into BFO up to 6%, the photocatalytic efficiency was maximized. The photocatalytic feasibility mechanism of Ce–Ni co-substitution BFO was discussed in detail. We have noted in this work that the fascinating properties in co-substituted BiFeO3 give the feasibility of producing a novel functional device.