Visible light photocatalytic activity of magnetically diluted Ni–Zn spinel ferrite for active degradation of rhodamine B

Abstract The nanoparticles of ZnxNi1-xFe2O4 (0.0 ≤ x ≤ 1 in steps 0.5) were prepared with the application of urea (CH4N2O) as a fuel in the sol-gel auto combustion technique and also used to remove the Rhodamine B (RhB) from the industrial waste-water. Before the process of water treatment began, the Ni–Zn ferrite nanoparticles were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, FE-SEM, VSM, and UV–Vis spectrophotometer. The measurement of XRD confirms that the cubic structure with the Fd-3m space group and the crystalline size was also calculated with the help of the Williamson-Hall (W–H) plot. The FT-IR spectra of Ni–Zn ferrite nanoparticles show two prominent absorption bands in the range of 390–560 cm−1. Optical properties of the prepared nanoparticles were evaluated using UV–Vis spectrophotometer and PL studies. The photocatalytic activity of the prepared NPs was studied under the sunlight and the percentage of maximum degradation was found to be 90%, 94%, and 98%, respectively, under 180 min.