Aluminium Doped Cerium Oxide as an Efficient Nanophotocatalyst for the Elimination of Rhodamine B Dye Present in Water

Abstract

The photodegradation efficiency of rhodamine B (RhB) dye present in water using aluminium-doped CeO2 (Ce1-xAlxO2-δ; x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5) nanoparticles was studied in this work. The synthesis of nanoparticles was done by simple wet chemical precipitation route. The photochemical characteristics of Al doped CeO2 was studied by UV-visible (UV) and photoluminescence (PL) techniques. The photocatalytic removal of RhB dye was studied using the above nanomaterials as photocatalysts and the degradation efficiency was optimized by varying the pH and the concentration of dye solution under UV light. Among the samples studied, 0.02 g of sample with the composition of Ce0.50Al0.50O2- δ exhibited a higher photocatalytic degradation efficiency of 70.94% against RhB dye having concentration of 0.05 g/L at the pH of 11 under UV irradiation for 60 min at room temperature.