Green energy induced photocatalytic decomposition of methylene blue and crystal violet dyes by strontium doped tin oxide nanoparticles and its antibacterial activity
Manmeet Kaur, Dixit Prasher, Vishal Kumar Dhiman, Preethi Murugesan, Deepa Ghosh, Ranjana Sharma
Abstract
Sunlight driven strontium doped tin oxide (SnO 2 ) photocatalyst was synthesized with different strontium (Sr) concentrations by the simplest sol-gel methodology. The XRD diffractogram findings revealed the decrement in the average crystallite size from 13 nm to 8 nm and shifting of diffraction peaks towards lower diffraction angle signifies the incorporation of Sr 2+ ions in the host lattice sites. Optical studies unveiled the reduction in the energy bandgap values with respect to doping concentration i.e. 2.94 eV for pristine SnO 2 to 2.43 eV for 1.5% Sr:SnO 2 . The photocatalytic measurements showed that the action of Sr doped SnO 2 nanoparticles (1.5%) on methylene blue (MB) and crystal violet (CV) dyes exhibited momentous photocatalytic performance of about 83.3% in 100 minutes and 67.8% in 150 minutes under natural sunlight. Additionally, an efficient antibacterial activity of Sr doped SnO 2 nanoparticles (at 1.5% doping) was estimated against a gram negative bacteria E. Coli .