Improved photocatalytic performance of nanostructured SnO 2 via addition of alkaline earth metals (Ba 2+ , Ca 2+ and Mg
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Improved photocatalytic performance of nanostructured SnO2 via addition of alkaline earth metals (Ba2+, Ca2+ and Mg2+) under visible light irradiation S. Asaithambi1 · P. Sakthivel1 · M. Karuppaiah1 · Y. Hayakawa2 · A. Loganathan3 · G. Ravi1 Received: 12 January 2020 / Accepted: 3 March 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Pure and alkaline earth metal ( Ba2+, Ca2+ and M g2+)-doped tin oxide nanoparticles were synthesized by simple co-precipitation, and their structural, optical, functional, morphological and compositional properties were analyzed in detail using powder X-ray diffraction, UV–visible spectroscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive analysis of X-ray (EDAX). XRD revealed the formation of rutile tetragonal structure, and the crystallite size has decreased from 28 to 24 nm by the addition of alkaline metal dopants. FTIR spectra confirmed the presence of fundamental vibration modes of S nO2. The optical band gap energy was decreased to 3.05, 3.19 and 2.98 eV by introducing B a2+, Ca2+ and Mg2+ ions, respectively. Photoluminescence spectra showed defectrelated emission peaks, and their intensities were found to increase in doped SnO2 samples. EDAX spectra confirmed the presence of Sn, O, Ba, Ca and Mg elements. The photocatalytic activity of pure and alkaline metal-doped SnO2 catalyst has been investigated under visible light irradiation by using methylene blue dye. The results showed that the Mg-doped SnO2 catalyst has a higher photodegradation efficiency (~ 95.7%) compared with other investigated samples. Keywords Photocatalysis · Photocatalytic degradation · UV–visible spectroscopy · Alkaline metal-doped SnO2
1 Introduction In the modern world, environmental pollution has become a serious concern. A large amount of textile and other industrial dyes have been allowed to mix with river water which pollute the environment [1, 2]. The contaminated wastewater may create various diseases like anemia, bladder irritation, cancer, etc., and affect human health [3–5]. Purification of industries wastewater is a difficult process, because it contains complex, organic chemical contaminants. Several methods have been used for removing the organic pollutants from the wastewater, such as ion exchange, bio-sorption, * G. Ravi [email protected] 1
Department of Physics, Alagappa University, Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu 630003, India
2
Research Institute of Electronics, Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu 432‑8011, Japan
3
Department of Physics, Engineering Section, Annamalai University, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu 608002, India
adsorption, coagulation and flocculation [6–8]. Among them, photocatalytic method is one of the green techniques which has vast potential remediation or degradation of organic dyes in the contaminated wastewater. Recently, researchers are focusing on high efficient semiconducting photocatalysts for the removal of organic pollutants from wastewa
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