Tailoring the photocatalytic activity of novel magnetically separable ZnFe12O19-chitosan bionanocomposites: A green preparation, structural characterization and comparative study

چکیده مقاله

Nowadays, the evaluation of nano-catalyts and photocatalytic technology for inactivating environmental pollution is identified as a priority. Although a series of semiconductor nanomaterials have been proven for this aim, suppression of charge carrier recombination and the absorption of solar light are still challenging. In this study, a novel visible-lightresponsive bionanocomposite of ZnFe12O19-chitosan (ZF-C) is designed by a facile twostep approach. The utilization of two natural stabilizer and capping agents including turnip and carrot juices is developed to adopt nucleation and growth mechanism of asfabricated crystals. In addition, benefiting from green templates, various quantities of these precursors show a strong impact on the construction of products in terms of structure and shape. The physic-chemical results confirmed creation of uniform ZF nanoparticles employing 20 mL of turnip juices. The band gap energy of ZF-C nanocomposites was found to be 1.55 eV, offering highly light absorption property in visible area. Moreover, the optimum photocatalyst had a specific surface area of 3.37 m2 g 1 . This research encompasses the first insights of photocatalytic efficiencies of ZF and [ZF-Cx] (x: 5.0%, 10.0% and 15.0%) nanocomposites toward five toxic dyes such as methyl violet (MV), erythrosine (EY), methylene blue (MB), methyl orange (MO), and rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light. As a proof-of-concept, the nanocomposites with 10.0% of chitosan matrix could exhibit higher photocatalyst performance about 94.12% EY removal after 120 min, which is 1.15 times better than that of pristine ZF nanostructures. Based on active species trapping experiments, a possible photodegradation pathway of EY dye over the [ZF-C10] nanocomposites has been reported. These findings describes a revolutionary way for selecting [ZF-C10] nanostructure as eco-friendly and magnetically recyclable photocatalysts in dye-containing effluents.