Highly efficient and stable catalytic reactivities of iron(-oxide) incorporated carbide nanofiber composite for environmental and bio-medical application
Ha‐Rim An, Soo An Bae, Chang‐Yeon Kim, Byoungchul Son, Ji‐In Park, Hye‐Ran Kim, Moonsang Lee, Kyeong Eun Yang, Sang Moon Lee, Soo Hyeon Kim, Yesul Jeong, Yujin Jang, Beomgyun Jeong, Hyun Uk Lee
Abstract
In this study, we applied iron (-oxide) incorporated carbide nanofiber composites as heterogeneous catalysts with wide visible-light absorption ability, catalytic reactivity, and catalytic stability for the highly efficient decomposition performance. Notably, water vapor activated iron (-oxide) incorporated carbide nanofiber catalyst (Act-Fe-CNF) showed high crystalline Fe3O4 phase, saturation magnetization point (17.76 emu/g), and large surface area (508.2 m2/g). In water vapor activation, Fe3C particles inside carbide nanofiber oxidized and aggregated to larger Fe3O4 particles, thereby forming a meso/macroporous structure and improving surface area offering more available active sites for catalytic reactivity. Under both UV-/real solar-light irradiation, it was demonstrated that the Act-Fe-CNF catalysts exhibited unprecedentedly excellent removal capabilities (>98%, [k] = 4.06 h−1) for rhodamine B, leading to complete water purification. Interestingly, the AF-CNFs catalysts also showed strong antimicrobial activities against gram-negative Escherichia coli (E. coli) and gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) under incandescent-light irradiation. These results indicated that the Act-Fe-CNF catalysts might have utility in important environmental and bio-medical applications.