Iron incorporated porous cerium oxide nanoparticles as an efficient photocatalyst for different hazardous elimination
Amal A. Atran, Fatma A. Ibrahim, Nasser S. Awwad, Mohamed S. Hamdy
Abstract
Porous ceria (CeO2) nanoparticles and iron-doped porous ceria with different iron contents (1 wt%, 2.5 wt%, 5 wt% and 10 wt%) were prepared using a one-pot simple process. Several characterization techniques were applied to characterize the prepared materials, including inductively coupled plasma (ICP) elemental analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), N2 sorption measurements, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high resolution-transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), and DR-UV-Vis. The obtained results confirm the incorporation of iron ions in the CeO2 lattice, with no evidence for the formation of iron oxide as a separate phase. More importantly, the light absorption property of Fe-doped porous ceria samples is found to be red-shifted and the calculated bandgap decreases from 3.08 to 2.66 eV for pure porous ceria and 10 wt% Fe-doped ceria, respectively. Under the illumination of visible light, the photocatalytic activity of Fe-doped porous ceria was investigated through the decolourization reaction of methyl green aqueous solution as a model contaminant in industrial wastewater. The obtained photocatalytic data show a remarkable increase in activity by almost 4.8 times higher compared to a pure ceria sample. Furthermore, the prepared Fe-doped ceria sample exhibits good reusability up to the fourth consecutive reaction without treatment. Moreover, the best-performing sample was further investigated in two additional photocatalytic reactions; the first is the elimination of phenol in an aqueous solution, while the second is the degradation of a gas mixture containing four short-chain hydrocarbon gases. The results of both reactions confirm the great improvement in the photocatalytic performance of Fe-doped porous ceria compared to a pure porous ceria sample.