Fabrication and characterization of Fe3O4@SiO2@TiO2@Ho nanostructures as a novel and highly efficient photocatalyst for degradation of organic pollution

In this work we synthesize a novel and highly efficient photocatalyst for degradation of methyl orange and rhodamine B. In addition, a new method for synthesis of Fe3O4@SiO2@TiO2@Ho magnetic core-shell nanoparticles with spherical morphology is proposed. The crystal structures, morphology and chemical properties of the as-synthesized nanoparticles were characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) techniques. The photocatalytic activity of Fe3O4@SiO2@TiO2@Ho was investigated by degradation of methyl orange (MO) as cationic dye and rhodamine B (RhB) as anionic dye in aqueous solution under UV/vis irradiation. The results indicate that about 92.1% of RhB and 78.4% of MO were degraded after 120 and 150 min, respectively. These degradation results show that Fe3O4@SiO2@TiO2@Ho nanoparticles are better photocatalyst than Fe3O4@SiO2@TiO2 for degradation of MO and RhB. As well as, the catalyst shows high recovery and stability even after several separation cycles. (C) 2016 Science Press and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science Press. All rights reserved.