Design and Fabrication of Novel Sheet-like Iron Vanadate Photocatalyst for the Photoreduction of Chromium

Abstract

In past days, the occurrence of toxic heavy metal ions into the water and soil environment causes major health risk to the living organisms. In this work, we mainly focused on the photoreduction of hexavalent chromium (Cr6+) using novel sheet-like Fe2V4O13 photocatalyst under visible light irradiation. The sheet-like Fe2V4O13 was tailored through hydrothermal process using ferric chloride and sodium metavanadate precursors without addition of any templates. The surface morphology, elemental analysis and various physical properties are characterized by numerous spectroscopic techniques. Interestingly, the sheet-like Fe2V4O13 demonstrated proficient photocatalytic performances towards the reduction of Cr6+ into Cr3+. The obtained UV-visible spectroscopy results portrayed that sheet-like Fe2V4O13 could reduce above of Cr6+ solution within 40 min. Moreover, the sheet-like Fe2V4O13 holds very good stability even after five consecutive cycles. This study could open new insights for the design novel nanostructured binary metal oxides for environmental applications.