Photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange based on manganese substituted bismuth ferrite nanoparticles

Herein, a microwave-assisted approach for the synthesis of Mn2+ doped bismuth ferrite (BMFO) nanoparticles is presented. Various techniques were used to examine the structure, morphology, and electrical characteristics of the as-synthesized BMFO nanoparticles. XRD and Raman analysis revealed a rhombohedral distorted perovskite structure having space group R3c. The crystallite size of BMFO was found to be 18.77 nm. SEM studies of the BFMO nanoparticles showed the highly agglomerated nature of the particles. The ultraviolet-diffuse reflectance spectrum of the BMFO revealed a bang gap of 1.56 eV which was smaller than the bandgap of pure BFO (2.41 eV). Methyl orange (ᯰMO) dye degradation behavior of the synthesized BMFO was examined for the dye sample solution in the presence of solar radiation. After 120 min of irradiation resulted in 81.08% photodegradation of MO dye. Kinetic studies demonstrated a pseudo-first-order rate mechanism for the photodegradation of the MO dye. The corresponding coefficient of determinant R2 and t1/2 were 0.92864 and 63.0 min, respectively. Finally, a methodology for the degradation of MO dye using BMFO was proposed.