Room Temperature Ferromagnetism of Magnetically Recyclable Photocatalyst of Cu1-x Mn x Fe2O4-TiO2 (0.0 aparts per thousandcurrency sign x aparts per thousandcurrency sign 0.5) Nanocomposites

Magnetically recyclable spinel Cu1-xMnxFe2O4 (0.0 a parts per thousand currency sign x a parts per thousand currency sign 0.5) ferrite nanophotocatalysts were synthesized by a simple one-pot microwave combustion method using glycine as the fuel. The synthesis process only took a few minutes to obtain CuFe2O4 nanopowders. The formation of nanocrystalline single-phase cubic spinel structure was confirmed by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) and selected area electron diffraction pattern (SAED) analyses. The surface morphology of the samples consists of nearly spherical shaped nanoparticles (NPs) with agglomeration, which was confirmed by high-resolution scanning electron microscopy (HR-SEM) and high resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) analyses. The optical band gap energy (E (g)) was confirmed by UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectrum (DRS) study, and the E (g) of undoped CuFe2O4 sample is 2.39 eV and it is increased from 2.51-2.81 eV with increasing the amount of Mn2+ content (x = 0.1-0.5), due to the decrease of particle size. The magnetic hysteresis (M- H) curve showed ferromagnetic behavior for all compositions. The magnetization (M (s)) of the samples monotonically increased with increasing Mn content x = 0.0-0.5. Smaller values of coercivity showed soft magnetic nature of Cu1-xMnxFe2O4 NPs. The photocatalytic degradation (PCD) of 4-chlorophenol (4-CP) under visible light using the spinel CuFe2O4 catalysts shows poor activity. Therefore, the present study leads to enhance the photocatalytic (PC) activity of spinel Cu1-xMnxFe2O4 NPs with the addition of TiO2 catalyst using the PCD of 4-CP under visible light. It was found that the coupled Cu1-xMnxFe2O4-TiO2 nanocomposite (NCs) photocatalysts exhibit excellent PC activity than that of Cu1-xMnxFe2O4 and TiO2 catalysts. The sample Cu0.5Mn0.5Fe2O4-TiO2 NCs showed greater performance than the other NCs. The enhanced PC ability of Cu1-xMnxFe2O4-TiO2 NCs could be ascribed to the interconnected heterojunction of spinel Cu1-xMnxFe2O4 and TiO2 catalysts.