Comparative study of structural, morphological, magneto-optical and photo-catalytic properties of magnetically reusable spinel MnFe2O4 nano-catalysts

Spinel MnFe2O4 nanostructures were synthesized by simple, economical and eco-friendly microwave combustion (MCM) and conventional combustion (CCM) methods using metal nitrates and glycine used as the fuel, instead of toxic inorganic/organic catalyst, template and surfactant. Powder XRD and FT-IR, EDX and SAED results were confirmed the products have a cubic phase spinel structure. EDX and SAED results confirmed purity and high crystallinity without any other secondary phase impurities. HR-SEM and HR-TEM analysis indicate that the MCM and CCM products consist of nano- and microstructures, respectively. The optical band gap (Eg) was measured using Kubelka-Munk model and it shows higher value (2.37 eV) for MnFe2O4-MCM than MnFe2O4-CCM (2.15 eV), due to the smaller particle size of MnFe2O4-MCM. VSM results showed a superparamagnetic behavior and the magnetization (Ms) value of MnFe2O4-MCM is higher i.e., 39.68 emu/g than MnFe2O4-CCM (33.59 emu/g). It was found that the sample MnFe2O4-MCM have higher surface area than MnFe2O4-CCM, which in turn leads to the improved performance towards the photocatalytic degradation (PCD) of methylene blue (MB) and it was found that the sample MnFe2O4-MCM show higher PCD efficiency (96.48%) than MnFe2O4-CCM (84.95%). Also, MnFe2O4 show higher activity with good reusability, and eco-friendly materials for industrial and technological applications