development of nio-co3o4 nano-ceramic composite materials as novel photocatalysts to degrade organic contaminants present in water

novel ceramic oxides have been increasingly focused in recent years because of their potentialapplications in environmental purification especially to treat organic contaminants present in water. in thisresearch work, a set of nio-co3o4 nano-ceramic composite materials were prepared by a simple refluxcondensation method using nickel acetate / cobalt acetate as precursor salts, sodium monododecyl sulphate(sds) as a surfactant and n,n-dimethylformamide (dmf) as solvent. the prepared nano-ceramic compositeswere calcined at different temperatures such as 200, 400, 600 and 800oc for 2 hours each to get the phase pureproduct. xrd results revealed that all the samples indexed to a cubic crystalline geometry. the presence ofmetal-oxygen bond (ni-o and co-o) was confirmed by ftir spectroscopy. the presence of ni, co and o inthe sample was confirmed by edax analysis. the existence of particles in nanometer range was shown bysem. the particle size analysis by light scattering method also confirmed the particles in nanometer range(approximately 270 nm) in all the three samples. the optical behavior of the materials was studied by uv-visand pl spectrophotometer. photocatalytic activity studies carried out with nio-co3o4 (1.0:1.0) nano-ceramiccomposites in presence of organic dyes such as, rhodamine b and methyl orange dyes under uv lightirradiation (for two hours) resulted in the degradation of 77% and 84% respectively.