An efficient visible light driven photocatalyst based on CuFe2O4/ rGO nanocomposites for effective degradation of methylene blue dye

The pollution issue is getting worse at the same time that industry is growing. One of the toxic ingredients of these industrial effluents is the organic dyes. In this research, the efficiency of organic dye degradation over as-prepared copper ferrite (CuFe2O4) and the annealed copper ferrite (600 degrees C and 800 degrees C) nanoparticles loaded on the reduced graphene oxide (rGO) photo -catalyst was investigated by hydrothermal method. The synthesized particles were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, RAMAN, FESEM, HRTEM, XPS, BET, UV-DRS and VSM. XRD and FESEM analysis were done to investigate structural properties, phase purity and surface morphology of prepared nanoferrite and their nanocomposites. FT-IR spectroscopic analysis was done to investigate functional groups of fabricated material. The FT-IR spectral analysis confirmed the presence of M -O (metal-oxygen) functional groups in the prepared materials. The RAMAN study confirmed the D-band and the G-band of graphene oxide present in the nanocomposites. UV-Vis-DRS study was done to evaluate the optical properties. The surface area and porosity of the nanoferrite and its nanocomposites were concluded by BET. The oxidation states of the constituent ions were confirmed by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). An active toxic and stable dye, Methylene Blue (MB) was employed as the target pollutant to evaluate the photocatalytic per-formance of the prepared nanocomposites. The effect of some parameters, dye concentration, pH and the catalyst concentration were studied. The cycle stability for dye degradation and reus-ability of the as-prepared catalysts show effective repeating activity up to 92.5% of its initial degradation efficiency of 100% even after four cycles. Moreover, the superparamagnetic property observed from VSM analysis made the nanocomposite recyclable.