The Gadolinium (Gd³⁺) and Tin (Sn⁴⁺) Co-doped BiFeO₃ Nanoparticles as New Solar Light Active Photocatalyst

The process of photocatalysis is appealing to huge interest motivated by the great promise of addressing current energy and environmental issues through converting solar light directly into chemical energy. However, an efficient solar energy harvesting for photocatalysis remains a critical challenge. Here, we reported a new full solar spectrum driven photocatalyst by co-doping of Gd 3+ and Sn 4+ into A and B-sites of BiFeO 3 simultaneously. The co-doping of Gd 3+ and Sn 4+ played a key role in hampering the recombination of electron-hole pairs and shifted the band-gap of BiFeO 3 from 2.10 eV to 2.03 eV. The Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) measurement confirmed that the co-doping of Gd 3+ and Sn 4+ into BiFeO 3 increased the surface area and porosity, and thus the photocatalytic activity of the Bi 0.90 Gd 0.10 Fe 0.95 Sn 0.05 O 3 system was significantly improved. Our work proposed a new photocatalyst that could degrade various organic dyes like Congo red, Methylene blue, and Methyl violet under irradiation with different light wavelengths and gave guidance for designing more efficient photocatalysts.