Structural, Magnetic, Electrical and Photo-Fenton Properties of Copper Substituted Strontium M-Hexagonal Ferrite Nanomaterials via Chemical Coprecipitation Approach

Abstract

Copper substituted strontium ferrite nano spinels were synthesized by facile chemical coprecipitation method. Structural properties of all the nano materials were examined using Powder X-ray Diffraction of size ranging 22–50 nm and High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy which further revealed the formation of hexagonal spinel structure. The analysis of FT-IR spectra of all the samples confirmed the formation of M–O bond with spinel structure having characteristic peaks at 422 cm-1 and 586 cm-1. All the samples were subjected to dielectric studies at room temperature. A quite narrow band gap around 1.5–1.6 eV for all the samples indicates that these ferrites can behave as visible light photocatalysts. The as synthesized nano spinels were proposed to be promising heterogeneous Photo-Fenton catalysts under visible light for the degradation of organic pollutants. The photo catalytic degradation results revealed 94% degradation for all the prepared nano catalysts. The materials displayed remarkable photo-stability with recyclability up to five consecutive cycles. VSM studies of the materials exhibited weak ferromagnetic property with high surface area. Therefore, these magnetic materials presented no significant loss in activity specifying an exceptional capacity of ferrites to remove organic pollutants from wastewater.