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

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 function-ality, 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 charac-teristics. 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.

Automated summary

Semi-conductive photocatalysts are highly efficient and cost-effective for water treatment applications. Material scientists are working on developing nanostructured Mn-doped cobalt ferrite as a magnetically recyclable photocatalytic material that is active in visible light and has high conductivity. The study investigates the crystal structure, chemical composition, functionality, and morphology of the prepared ferrite samples, as well as their thermal stability, electrical conductivity, light-harvesting capability, charge transport performance, and charge separation efficiency.