Investigation of photochemical properties of CeO2:0.1Nd and CeO2:0.05Nd0.05 M(M: Dy, Sm, Tb)

This study examined the effect of different dope types to contribute for the photochemical application area of the CeO2 compound. In addition, the photocatalyst properties of binary and ternary compounds, which vary with the molecular structure of dye species, were reported. For. this purpose, undoped-CeO2. CeO2:0.1Nd and CeO2:0.05Nd0.05 M(Dy,Sm,Tb) compounds were synthesized by a semi-process room temperature(SPRT) method. In characterization studies, X-ray powder diffractometry (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman, ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV–vis), and photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL) were used. The secondary phase was observed with a 0.05 Tb contribution. The cubic crystal structure was obtained in other compounds. The lowest optical band gap was determined as 2.60 eV in CeO2:0.1Nd compound. In photocatalyst studies, methylene blue(MB), malachite green (MG), and rhodamine-B(RhB) dyes were used. It was observed that the photocatalytic efficiency decreased as the molecular size increased. The highest catalytic efficiency was calculated as 82% for the CeO2:0.1Nd compound for methylene blue. The PL results determined that the doping of Nd3+, Sm3+, Dy3+, and Tb3+ ions played an important role in developing blue, green, and red emission bands for the photoluminescence of CeO2.