Photocatalytic property of co-precipitated manganese substituted on cobalt ferrite nanoparticles

In this study, cobalt ferrite doped with manganese ions (MnxCo1-xFe2O4) was carried out. The magnetic nanoparticles were synthesized with coprecipitation method for x = 0.25, then annealed with variation temperature 200°C; 300°C; 400°C; and 500°C. Uv-Visible spectrophotometry is used to measured photocatalytic performance including the efficiency of photocatalytic as well as the rate constant of MB degradation and the optical energy bandgap. The degradation efficiency was 59%; 62%; 64%; and 77% for samples with annealed temperature at 200°C; 300°C; 400°C; and 500°C. The optical band gap energy (Eg) was calculated for all samples with the plot (αhv)2 vs hv, the result determined the energy bandgap Eg to be around 1.78 eV. The addition of manganese in cobalt ferrite causes the bandgap energy to lower into the visible light absorption area, so it is good for photocatalyst.