Study of synthesis and characterization of ZnO, TiO2, and Fe3O4 nanoparticles/nanocomposites and evaluation of their photocatalytic dye degradation capabilities against Rhodamine-B and Methylene blue.

Abstract

Abstract A facile wet-chemical approach was adopted to synthesize zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, and iron (II/III) oxide, followed by synthesis of ZnO-TiO2-Fe3O4 nanocomposite via physical mixing. The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized using X-ray diffraction, UV-Visible spectroscopy, vibrating sample magnetometry, transmission electron microscopy, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy in order to investigate various physical and chemical characteristics of the prepared samples. Furthermore, the catalytic reduction performance of prepared nanomaterials was studied by Methylene blue (MB), and Rhodamine-B (Rh-B) removal in aqueous solutions under UV/visible light illumination. It has been observed that, the degradation efficiency of the nanocomposite was equivalent or, slightly better than TiO2 nanoparticles, and higher than ZnO nanoparticles against both the dye solution. While its removal efficiency using external magnetic field is much higher than the constituent nanoparticles, owing to its higher saturation magnetization. So, the obtained results suggest that, produced nanocomposite can be employed as high potential catalyst for the reduction of organic dyes and pollutants in waste water treatments.