Facile wet chemical synthesis and characterization of zinc doped gadolinium oxide nanoparticles for enhanced photodegradation of Rhodamine B dye under illumination of UV light

In this study, we discuss the wet chemical synthesis and experimental analysis of zinc doped Gd2O3(Gd2-xZnxO3-δ) nanoparticles where, x=0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5. The cubic crystalline structure is derived from XRD results and the existence of metal-oxide bond has been confirmed from FTIR studies. According to SEM and PSA analysis, the produced nanoparticles are found to be of nano size. The EDX data verified the presence of Gd, Zn, and O in the samples. Based on UV-visible spectroscopy, the band gap and λmax values were computed. In an aqueous medium and under UV light irradiation, the photodegradation of Rhodamine B over Zn doped Gd2O3 nanoparticles was studied. It was observed that Gd1.50Zn0.50O3-δ has exhibited 82% of photo-degradation of the dye solution which further increased to 96% because of increasing the catalyst loading. The effect of pH and the concentration of the dye are also reported. According to the kinetic analysis, the photocatalysis process followed a pseudo-first-order kinetic model. A radical scavenger technique was used to further examine and identify the function of photoactive species.