Physicochemical properties of hydroxyapatite modified with vanadium ions for degradation of methylene blue

Abstract

Degradation of pollutants, including organic dyes via photocatalysis technique, has attracted great concern last decade. Thus, modified hydroxyapatite (HAP) with vanadate ions (VO43−) has been fabricated using the co-precipitation method at different vanadate contributions. The obtained compositions have been investigated upon their structure, morphology, and optical properties. The structural calculations indicated that a-axis increased from 9.483 to 9.562 Å for the lowest and the highest additional vanadate ions. Moreover, the average roughness developed from 30.5 to 56.3 nm upon the vanadate insertion. Moreover, the direct bandgap decreased from 3.9 to 3.82 eV upon the additional vanadate ions, while the refractive index increased slightly from 1.86 to 1.87. Further, the removal of methylene blue through aqueous solutions has been examined and showed that the removal effectiveness increased from 89.3 to 97.2% after 120 min of irradiation using visible light. These modified HAP crystals could encourage their utilization for potential applications incusing water treatment, besides their usages for biomedical applications.