Green Synthesis of Recyclable, Cost‑Effective, Chemically Stable, and Environmentally Friendly CuS@Fe3O4 Nanoparticles for the Photocatalytic Degradation of Dye

Abstract

A sustainable and facile method was used to synthesize eco-friendly and reusable CuS@Fe3O4 nanoparticles by kalanchoe plant extract. The ability of synthesized catalyst was examined for photocatalytic degradation of yellow 3G. The FESEM and BET images revealed uniform spherical and mesoporous nanostructures with an average size of 72 nm. XRD results showed the presence of both, Fe3O4and CuS crystals. FTIR spectra in the range of 400–4000 cm− 1 showed several peaks which belonged to Fe–O and Cu–S tensile vibrations. The VSM results showed that it kept its magnetic property even after adding kalanchoe extract to the photocatalyst. The PL spectra elucidated that CuS@Fe3O4/Kalanchoe has more efficient photocatalytic performance than CuS and CuS @ Fe3O4. Conditions such as pH, catalyst dosage, and initial dye concentrations were optimized at room temperature. Results revealed that the optimum point of different parameters was pH 3, catalyst concentration of 0.3 g/L, and 10 mg/L of yellow 3G. The pollutant's photocatalytic degradation kinetics followed the pseudo-first-order kinetics model with a rate constant (k) of 0.226 min−1 at optimum conditions. Due to the promising activity of CuS@Fe3O4/Kalanchoe in the photodegradation of yellow 3G, it can be proposed to remove other hazardous dyes