Protic Ionic Liquid Assisted Synthesis and Characterization of Ferromagnetic Cobalt Oxide Nanocatalyst

Cobalt oxide (Co3O4) nanocatalyst was synthesized by sol-gel method using the protic ionic liquid namely 1-butylimidazolium glycolate as solvent and stabilizer. The obtained Co3O4 nanocatalyst was characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared, High resolution scanning electron microscopy (HR-SEM), Energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), High resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), Selected area electron diffraction, UV-Visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, Photoluminescence spectroscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area and Vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). Powder XRD results showed the wellcrystalline cubic structure of synthesized Co3O4 with size of 19.29 nm. Also, the sphere-like morphology of Co3O4 nanocatalyst was confirmed by HR-SEM and HR-TEM images. Furthermore, the synthesized Co3O4 nanocatalyst possessed optical band gap values of 1.75 and 2.46 eV and hence acted as a semiconducting material. In addition, the presence of small hysteresis loop in Magnetic measurement (VSM) confirmed the ferromagnetic nature of Co3O4 nanoparticles. Moreover, the synthesized Co3O4 nanocatalyst found to be used in photo-catalytic degradation of methylene blue and exhibited 94.61% efficiency.