Synthesis of silver and aluminum doped magnetic nanoparticles: New fascinating materials with multipurpose applications.

• Ag-Fe and Al-Fe nanoparticles. • Super-paramagnetic behavior. • Photo-catalytic H-evolution. Two novel bi-metallic Ag-Fe (SF) and Al-Fe (AF) nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized by co-precipitation method. Advanced characterization techniques such as XRD, FTIR, TGA, DRS, BET, Zetasizer, XPS, and SEM were utilized in order to investigate the microstructure and morphology of as synthesized NPs. Average crystallite size calculated was ~23.88 nm (SF-NPs) and 24.41 nm (AF-NPs) via XRD measurement whereas, SEM indicated the size ranged from (45–83) nm. Super paramagnetic behaviour with saturation magnetization (Ms) of 128 and 52 emu/g was confirmed for SF and AF-NPs respectively. SF and AF-NPs showed a better H-Evolution (HE) ability in presence of ethanol and methanol as sacrificial agent as compared to pure samples. Furthermore, SF and AF-NPs showed 71, 83% and 92, 86% photocatalytic degradation for MB and MG dyes under solar light irradiation. The better performance with low cost synthesis and trivial toxicity ensured the importance of SF and AF-NPs in various practical applications at industrial level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]