Structural, Magnetic and Photocatalytic Properties of BiFeO3 Nanoparticles

Single phase BiFeO3 (BFO) nanoparticles as a visible light photocatalyst were successfully synthesized by thermal decomposition of the glyoxylate precursor. The glyoxylate precursors were formed by the redox reaction between ethylene glycol and nitrate ions. The phase evolution, structure and optical properties of BFO nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy and UV–Vis spectroscopy methods. The BFO nanoparticles showed the quasi spherical shape. The BFO nanoparticles synthesized at 500 °C showed the weak ferromagnetism behavior, due to the size confinement effect, in spite of the antiferromagnetic behavior of the BFO nanoparticles synthesized at 600 °C. The BFO nanoparticles exhibited strong absorption in the visible region with the optical band gap calculated from Tauc’s plot. The optical band gap decreased from 2.10 to 2.08 eV by the increasing of thermal decomposition temperature. Moreover, the BFO nanoparticles were used for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) as a typical dye pollutant under direct sunlight irradiation.