Room temperature multiferroic nanostructured Gallium Ferrite based visible light driven photocatalyst for degradation of azine dyes

Abstract

Gallium ferrite nanoparticles (GFOnps) were synthesized using modified sol-gel technique and its physical, chemical, and optical properties were studied. GFOnps was synthesised at room temperature and calcined at 900°C to obtain pure orthorhombic (Pc21n) phase of GFOnps. They were evaluated for the photocatalytic degradation of azine dyes: methyl violet (MV) and methylene blue (MB). The structural studies performed using XRD and Raman spectroscopy, XRD and Raman spectra showed pure phase with orthorhombic structure (Pc21n) without any impurities. The UV-Vis measurement showed a broad absorption band around 500nm-800nm range. The energy band gap calculation using the Tauc plot was performed and Eg was found to be 2.08eV. EDS measurement displayed the complete elemental composition. Transmission electron microscopy was used to study the morphological and structural properties of GFOnps. The observation showed evenly distributed particles at the surface with particle size ranging from 20-40nm. Multiferroic property analysis of GFOnps were performed using VSM and PE measurements respectively at room temperature. In PE study, irregular hysteresis loop was observed, while in magnetic measurement ferrimagnetic hysteresis loop was obtained which was not found to be saturating at the applied magnetic field of 6T. In the photocatalytic degradation study, dye degradation percentage was 97% for Methyl Violet and 56.6% for Methylene Blue in 120 min and 150 min, respectively. Cyclic study showed re-usability of the GFOnps for up to 3 cycles. Thus, GFOnps have showcased excellent photocatalytic performance over two azine dyes and also showed room temperature multiferroic performance.