Synthesis of magnetic Fe₃O₄@ZnO@graphene oxide nanocomposite for photodegradation of organic dye pollutant

ABSTRACT

In this study graphene oxide (GO) is applied as a substrate for the synthesis of the magnetic ZnO nanocomposite (GO-Fe₃O₄-ZnO). The prepared samples are characterised using XRD and VSM. The photocatalytic performance of the synthesised samples is evaluated according to the photodegradation of methyl orange (MO) as an organic dye pollutant model. The XRD results show that the prepared nanocomposites contain the modified GO with the cubic structure of Fe₃O₄ and hexagonal wurtzite structure of ZnO nanoparticles. Base on the VSM results, it can be confirmed that the synthesised Fe₃O₄-ZnO, GO-Fe₃O₄ and GO-Fe₃O₄-ZnO have superparamagnetic properties. Meanwhile, the saturation magnetisation (Ms) of GO-Fe₃O₄ (45.788 emu/g) is higher than that of Fe₃O₄-ZnO and GO-Fe₃O₄-ZnO. The UV–vis spectrophotometer results reveal that all of the prepared samples can adsorb the UV irradiation and decompose the MO. The removal efficiency of MO using GO-Fe₃O₄-ZnO at each concentration and irradiation time is more than that of Fe₃O₄-ZnO. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) results confirm that main factors (weight fraction and irradiation time) and their interactions have a significant effect on the removal efficiency of MO.

KEYWORDS:

• Graphene oxide
• Fe₃O₄
• ZnO
• removal efficiency
• ANOVA

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank the Esfarayen University of Technology for its contribution to this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.