Dual effect of lignin amine on fabrication of magnetic Fe3O4/C/ZnO nanocomposite in situ and photocatalytic property

The Fe3O4/C/ZnO ternary composite has been synthesized by a facile one-pot method, in which lignin amine (LA) was used as carbon source as well as bridging ligand. Its structure, morphology and composition have been intensively characterized. The composite is found to be composed by cubic spinel Fe3O4 , amorphous carbon and hexagonal wurtzite ZnO. Its morphology features as particles in the mean sizes of about 20 nm, which is larger than those of Fe3O4 and Fe3O4/ZnO. This case may be caused by the special construction of the resulting composite. Fe3O4 is covered by carbon, together forming particles; simultaneously, they interconnect with ZnO particles, leading to an increase in the particle size. With these peculiar structural characteristics, the synergistic effect is unraveled to enhance catalytic property of the composite while being applied in water treatment. Fe3O4/C/ZnO under both ultraviolet and visible light irradiation is found to show high degradation efficiencies. More importantly, the catalytic performance is very stable, maintaining 94% even after 5-cycle re-using test. Moreover, our composite materials also display excellent photocatalytic activities on degrading norfioxacin (NF) that is widely used as antibody. Due to easy recovery, good performance and facile synthetic route, our Fe3O4/C/ZnO is anticipated to have a good practical prospect in applications of water treatment.