Photocatalytic degradation of dyes by cobalt ferrite nanoparticles synthesized by sol-gel method

Abstract

Cobalt ferrite (CoFe2O4) nanoparticles were prepared by sol-gel method for structural, optical and photocatalytic studies. These nanoparticles were characterized by various physiochemical techniques such as XRD, FTIR, SEM with EDAX, and UV-DRS. Cubic spinel structure with Fd-3m space group has been confirmed by XRD studies. FTIR confirms the vibrational stretching frequencies of tetrahedral (580?cm-1) and octahedral (397?cm-1) sites. SEM images show the agglomerated nature of ferrite nanoparticles and EDAX spectrum confirms the elemental compositions present in the prepared samples. UV-DRS spectrum shows that the CoFe2O4 nanoparticles are visible active material. The photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue and Evans blue dye was evaluated under visible light irradiation. The prepared nanoparticles showed good activity for the degradation of dyes which confirms that these nanoparticles can be useful for wastewater treatment.