A facile green synthesis of spherical Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles and their effect on degradation of methylene blue in aqueous solution

We have been developed a facile and cost effective green synthesis of iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles (Fe3O4 MNPs) by using Ridge gourd peels (RG) extract as reducing and capping agent The synthesized RG-FeMNPs are characterized by various physiochemical methods such as powder XRD, FT-IR, Raman, BET, FESEM, VSM and TEM methods. The results clearly demonstrated that the synthesized iron oxide (Fe3O4) nanoparticles are spherical in shape with an average size of 20-35 nm. Besides, the nanoparticles exhibit very high specific surface area of 26.21 m(2)/g. Further, the synthesized Fe3O4 nanoparticles exhibit ferromagnetic natures with higher saturation magnetization of 17.3 (emu/g). The catalytic properties of RG-FeMNPs for degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye in aqueous solution have been studied by UV-vis spectroscopy. The results show that the synthesized high surface area RG-FeMNPs has an excellent adsorption performance. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.