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Catalytic activity of spinel ferrite in breaking down toxic dye materials are promising due to their uniqueness. In this study, aluminum‐doped copper zinc ferrite, Cu0.4Zn0.6‐xAlxFe2O4 (x = 0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6), a catalyst for toxic dye degradation is synthesized through chemical co‐precipitation route. The formation of the spinel ferrite catalyst is initially confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectra, which shows the frequency of metal‐oxygen bond vibration at 539 and 427 cm−1 attributed to the tetrahedral and octahedral sites respectively. Higher intensity sharp peak of X‐ray diffraction for (311) plane is the evidence for the phase purity and the formation of spinel ferrite. The crystallite size is found to decrease with the increase of Al3+ ion. The surface structure of the obtained particles is investigated using a scanning electron microscope. Analyses of the material's magnetic characteristics using a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) revealed that it is, in fact, a soft magnet, as evidenced by the loop of its hysteresis, which is narrow. The catalytic degradation of methylene blue dye under the mechanism of the photo‐Fenton process is studied with the obtained spinel ferrites and the result is found to be as high as 96.5%. The process follows pseudo‐second order kinetics and the Langmuir isotherm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)-ZnO-Al2O3 composite films have been prepared by the addition of different compositions of ZnO and Al2O3 through solvent casting method. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis) and photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL) spectra revealed the successful incorporation of ZnO and Al2O3 onto PVA and interactions among ZnO, Al2O3 and PVA molecules. PL data indeed showed the enhanced luminescence property of composite films compared with the PVA. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) data showed that thermal stability of PVA-ZnO-Al2O3 composite films could be greatly improved by the incorporation of ZnO and Al2O3 into the system. The glass transition temperature (Tg) were increased for the composite samples using ZnO and Al2O3. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements revealed that the melting temperature (Tm) of PVA-ZnO-Al2O3 composite films are significantly higher (~ 12 to 25 °C) than PVA. The photocatalytic measurements exhibited better photocatalytic degradation ability of PVA-ZnO-Al2O3 composites over PVA. Such photocatalytic capacity makes the PVA-ZnO-Al2O3 composite films promising candidates for the removal of organic dyes for water purification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthetic organic dyes are becoming the major class of water pollutants leading to malignant detriments to the ecology. Consequently, this research focuses on remediating this circumstance utilizing a novel catalytic material, namely, cerium-doped spinel ferrite Ni 0.6 Cu 0.4 Ce x Fe 2- x O 4 ( x = 0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5), developed using the chemical coprecipitation technique and characterized using FTIR, XRD, FE-SEM, EDX and VSM analysis. The particles have shown band gap values ranging from 4.29 to 2.01 eV. The as-synthesized nano-sized particles were employed as a photocatalyst to degrade the complex structure of congo red (CR) dye. About 91% of the dye was degraded with 60 mg of the catalyst under visible light irradiation with the highest cerium-doping ( x = 1.5) at a pH below 6.8, which was the zero-surface charge pH for the particle. Batch studies were performed to optimize all the conditions, including the dose, concentration, pH, and different light energy sources. Recyclability of the catalyst was also investigated, which was supported by the higher stability of the recovered particles through XRD analysis. Reaction kinetics for this system were evaluated along with three isotherm models. Moreover, the scavenging test indicated that the major active species leading to this degradation was hole (h + ), and a schematic degradation mechanism is presented. Following that, this model can successfully be used for wastewater treatment., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)