Sonochemical synthesis of Sn-doped La2O3 nanoparticles and its application for the photocatalytic degradation of hazardous pollutants

The sonochemical technique is used to develop tin (Sn)-doped lanthanum oxide (La2O3) nanoparticles (La2O3-Sn NPs) with a narrow particle size distribution. A variety of approaches are used to characterize the nanoparticles further, including X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, particle size distribution analysis, field emission scanning electron microscopy, elemental compositional analysis, UV-visible spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The experimental XRD analysis findings showed that doping tin (Sn) into lanthanum (La) leads to changes in the crystallite size of the produced nanoparticles and changes in the average particle size from 55 to 22 nm. The improvement of the optical characteristics and photocatalytic degradation (safranin and crystal violet) under visible light is induced through the emergence of a new absorption band in UV-Vis spectra by Sn doping with La2O3 NPs. 100 mg/L of La2O3-Sn NPs are used in the photocatalytic experiment for (safranin and crystal violet) at ambient temperature. The experimental findings showed that 93.24% and 95.28% of safranin and crystal violet dye degraded after exposure to sunlight for a short time. The La2O3 NPs with Sn ions exhibit the highest degrading efficiency. Furthermore, the kinetics investigations are evaluated using the pseudo-first-order model.