Growth and investigation of magnetic and optical properties of Fe3O4@CuO core-shell nanostructures

In this study, Fe3O4@CuO core-shell nanostructures were synthesized through simple chemical methods for using in degradation process of chemical dyes application. Structural, morphological, magnetic, and optical properties of the obtained product were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM), hysteresis loop, absorbance (UV-Vis), and photoluminescence (PL) spectra. The XRD patterns revealed the formation of multi-crystalline Fe3O4 (Cubic) and CuO (Monoclinic) phases. Electron microscopy images also show formation of structures in nano-dimension with spherical- and belt-like morphologies. Magnetic studies that carried out by hysteresis loop show decreases in magnetic properties of core-shell nanostructures which can be due to weak magnetic properties of CuO. Investigating optical properties of core-shell nanostructures demonstrated the existence of absorbance edge at a visible region that is proper for solar ray absorbance and participates in photocatalytic degradation activity. Tauc plot also show decreasing in optical energy band gap of core-shell compare to the shell nanostructures.