Synergistic photodegradation of methylene blue by Sm doped Fe2O3 photocatalyst under sunlight

The growing population led to an increase in water contamination, which urged researchers to develop an efficient, eco-friendly, and safe catalyst to remove these pollutants from water bodies. Herein the present study, the Sm-doped Fe2O3 photocatalyst was developed through a low-cost and facile sol-gel route to degrade methylene blue (MB) under sunlight. Various characteriza-tions of the photocatalyst were performed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), photoluminescence (PL), and UV-vis spectrometry, current-voltage measurements (IV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The XRD confirmed the successful doping of Sm in Fe2O3 lattices. Remarkably, the adsorption were 14%, 10%, 34%, photo-reduction efficiencies were 78.2%, 79.1%, 65.8%, while complete degradation of dyes were 91.2, 89.1 and 99.8% for Fe3O3, Sm2O3 and Sm-doped Fe2O3, respectively, against methylene blue dye after 1.0 h under sunlight illumination. Moreover, the enhanced photocatalytic performance of the doped catalyst was found to be due to the structural variation, lower energy bandgap, hindered recombination, and the efficient charge carriers separation/transportation at the surface. The effective synergistic photocatalytic performance proved its potential in water remediation.