Highly efficient and visible light–driven nickel–doped vanadium oxide photocatalyst for degradation of Rhodamine B Dye

Abstract

Water pollution has become serious threat for environment and society. Due to failure of different methods, semiconductor photocatalyst based advance oxidation process has attracted a huge interest for wastewater treatment. In this work, Nickel-doped vanadium pentaoxide (Ni doped-V2O5) is synthesized using easy and facile sol–gel synthesis route and the synthesized material is characterized through various characterization tools. The orthorhombic phase was detected in which decrease in crystallite size is observed with addition of dopant. The SEM analysis revealed that layered structure is formed with sufficient surface area and Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) represented the purity of samples. UV–Vis and Photoluminescence spectroscopies provide the information about the absorption and band gap of material and confirm the visible light response of the prepared catalysts. The photodegradation of RhB was evaluated through employing Ni doped-V2O5 photocatalyst which exhibited the 100% dye removal and high photostability. The factors which can affect the performance of catalytic activity are also studied to optimize the parameters for maximum dye removal. The kinetic study was also performed which showed that the synthesized materials follows pseudo first order kinetics.