Photocatalytic activity and doping effects of BiFeO3 nanoparticles in model organic dyes

Abstract

The studies of advanced materials in environmental remediation and degradation of pollutants is rapidly advancing because of their wide varieties of applications. BiFeO 3 (BFO), a perovskite nanomaterial with a rhombohedral R3c space group, is currently receiving tremendous attention in photodegradation of dyes. The photocatalytic activity of BFO nanoparticle is a promising field of research in photocatalysis. BFO nanomaterial is a photocatalyst enhanced by doping because of its reduce bandgap energy (2.0-2.77 eV), multiferroic property, strong photoabsorption and crystal structure. The material has proven to be very useful for the degradation of dyes under visible light irradiation among other photocatalysts. Its exceptional nontoxicity, suitability, low cost and long term excellent stability makes it an efficient photocatalyst for the degradation of effluents from textile and pharmaceutical industries which ended-up in the environment and now a major concern of the modern world. This mini-review attempts to provide some detailed synthetic routes of BFO and BFO related nanomaterials and the notable achievements so far on the effect of doping the material. It also discusses the effect of crystallite size of the material and other photophysical properties and how they influence the photocatalytic process of model organic dye pollutants, to date.

A Facile Synthesis and Characterization of Highly Crystalline Submicro-Sized BiFeO3

“…Thus, it is widely used in photovoltaics [ 6 ]. Moreover, BFO was shown to be an efficient visible light photocatalyst for the degradation of organic pollutants, such as antibiotics and dyes [ 7 , 8 , 9 ]. It was successfully utilized both in its pure form and in the form of composites with other materials [ 10 , 11 ].…”

Energy Band Gap Modeling of Doped Bismuth Ferrite Multifunctional Material Using Gravitational Search Algorithm Optimized Support Vector Regression

“…The structural distortion in the crystal lattice attributed to the introduction of different classes of doping materials into the rhombohedrally distorted perovskite structure of bismuth ferrite is the descriptive input to the developed HGS-SVR model. The distortions are encoded in the lattice parameters of the doped bismuth ferrite compounds extracted from the literature [3,11,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. The corresponding experimentally measured energy band gap for all forty-three bismuth ferrite compounds are also drawn from the same source.…”

“…Bismuth ferrite with the chemical formula BiFeO3 has been known since the 1950s [1]. However, its potential applications as a semiconductor multifunctional material in piezoelectric devices, spintronics, sensors, photosensitizers, and photocatalyisis have recently gained significant interest [2][3][4][5]. The narrow energy band gap characterizing this material allows the maximum and efficient utilization of the visible light from solar radiation energy as compared to the widely used TiO2 photocatalyst that absorbs in the UV range as a result of its wide band gap [6].…”

“…Other promising technological application areas of bismuth ferrite include wastewater treatment, in photovoltaics, in the photodegredation of organic dyes, in air purification processes, and in the generation of clean energy through hydrogen generation from water splitting [7]. The response of bismuth ferrite to visible light due to the nature of its band gap is of particular interest in photocatalytic applications because the material combines many unique features such as cost effectiveness, nontoxicity, long-term stability, special crystalline structure, electro-optical properties, and electrical conductivity [3]. This work determines the band gap energy of dopedbismuth ferrite from the crystal lattice distortion caused by doping using a hybrid gravitational search (HGS) algorithm and support vector regression (SVR) algorithm.…”

Enhanced UV-Vis Photodegradation of Nanocomposite Reduced Graphene Oxide/Ferrite Nanofiber Films Prepared by Laser-Assisted Evaporation

“…The photogenerated e − and h + can be trapped in the MFeO 3 lattice and rapidly recombine [81,82]. However, the addition of rGO and its high electrical conductivity supplied by the π-π conjugated structure and the low amount of oxygen-containing functional groups further enhance the electrical conductivity and promote the separation of e − and h + , improving the degradation capabilities as compared to MFO or rGO alone [83,84].…”