Immobilization of mixed cobalt/nickel metal-organic framework on a magnetic BiFeO3: A highly efficient separable photocatalyst for degradation of water pollutions

In this work, a novel magnetic based composite of bimetallic Ni/Co based metal-organic framework with the magnetic BiFeO3 have been successfully synthesized with the aid of a facile synthesis approach. Different weight ratio of Co/Ni-MOF and magnetic BiFeO3 containing composite system have been prepared. The as-synthesized MOF/BiFeO3 composite have been characterized with the utilization of Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), Vibrating sample manometer (VSM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX) characterization techniques. Among the various synthesized photocatalysts, the MOF/BiFeO3 (1:1) composite exhibited the superior performance toward the totally photocatalytic degradation of MO and 4-NP contaminants under incident visible light irradiation. According to the obtained results, the enhanced photocatalytic activities of MOF/BiFeO3 composite compared to the pure MOF and BiFeO3 could be attributed to the efficient separation of photo-generated electrons from holes pairs, existence of selective pores, high surface area, large amount of visible light harvesting, easy transportation of guest molecules and adsorption properties. Furthermore, due to the magnetic properties of the MOF/BiFeO3 composite it can be reused again without significant decrease in the catalytic activity. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.