Synthesis, characterization and photocatalytic study of Rare Earth (Pr 3+ ) substituted zinc spinel ferrite for Crystal violet dye degradation

Eliminating organic dyes from wastewater discharged by textile industries is essential due to their toxic and harmful impact on the environment . This paper mainly highlighted the structural, morphological, optical and photocatalytic activity studies of pristine and Pr ³⁺ doped Zn ferrites, which was synthesized using homogeneous Microwave assisted sol - gel technique. And the characterisation techniques like X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), FTIR, SEM-EDAX, UV–vis spectroscopy were employed to analyse structural parameters, Surface morphology, chemical composition, absorption, optical band gap of synthesized ferrite materials. From this analysis, it is confirmed by the phase and cubic spinel nature of prepared materials since there observed reflections peaked at (311) plane. Crystallite size(D) of powdered materials as determined using the Debye Sherrer formula, was observed to be decreased as (41 to 19) nm. The FTIR study verified the appearance of (Me-O) bonding vibrations in region of (400-700) cm ^-1 , which is a relevant spectral region for spinel ferrite. Optical properties of rare earth doped ZnFe ₂ O ₄ were examined by UV–visible (UV–vis) absorption spectroscopy where Tauc plots were designed using absorption data to estimate a band gap. The nature of change in band gap Eg (1.85 to 1.78) eV with increasing Pr content, explores a materials potential utility for visible light driven photocatalytic activity application. From VSM data, magnetic hysteresis (M−H) curves were constructed, which then analysed to interpret magnetic nature and parameters like saturation magnetization (Ms), remanent magnetization (Mr), Coercivity (Hc) values of ferrite nanoparticles. The Photocatalytic activity was examined via dye degradation using Crystal violet and the maximum degradation efficiency is found to have 64% for (x=0.04) Pr doped Zinc spinel ferrites. The resulting materials are excellent photocatalytic agents against Crystal violet dye and are applicable in remediation from waste water.