Design and development of a novel lanthanum inserted CuCr2O4 nanoparticles photocatalyst for the efficient removal of water pollutions

In the present research study, the insertion of lanthanum in the CuCr2O4 lattice structure have been reported for the first time. Lanthanum insertion performed via a simple preparation approach. Different loading percentages of lanthanum in the CuCr2O4 crystal structure have been successfully performed. To confirm the correct structure of as prepared materials we have been utilized the various characterization methods including x-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), Diffuse reflectance (DRS) and Vibrating Sample Magnometer (VSM). The photocatalytic behavior of the as-synthesized nanostructures were evaluated for the destruction of RhB and MO organic contaminants under incident visible light illumination. The prepared catalyst demonstrated the 98 and 99% photocatalytic degradation for the destruction of Rh B and MO organic dyes. According to the trapping experiments the superoxide anion radicals was the main reactive species in the photocatalytic process. To further addressing the enhancement in the photocatalytic ability of the prepared phtotocatalyst for the decontamination of water contaminants a suggested photocatalytic mechanism based on the obtained experiments and tests have been proposed. According to the reusability evaluation tests the synthesized catalyst can be recycled six times without remarkable loss in the photocatalytic performance.