Improved magnetic, optical, electrochemical, and structural properties of copper ferrite through the optimized addition of samarium dopant using the co-precipitation method

For the feasible application of photocatalysis technology at an industrial scale, demand for visible-light-driven photocatalysts with excellent superparamagnetic properties for easy separation has soared. In this work, the magnetic, optical, electrochemical, and structural properties of copper ferrite nanoparticles were improved by optimizing the amount of Sm dopant (SmxCuFe2-xO4, where x = 0, 0.03, 0.06, 0.09, 0.12, 0.15) added during synthesis. Sm-CF-0.06 was found to be the optimized synthesized material as it shows high crystallinity (30.9 nm) and saturation magnetisation (52.6 emu/g) which was accompanied by small coercivity (58.5 Oe) and remanent magnetisation (6.13 emu/g). In addition, Sm-CF-0.06 exhibited faster movement of electrons on the surface of the material and demonstrated effective charge separation of photo-generated electrons and holes as observed from cyclic voltammograms and Nyquist plots respectively. The synthesized materials exhibited superparamagnetic properties and their bandgap was found to be in the range of (1.56-1.62 eV) which gave them an edge for separation using external magnets and allow the utilizing abundant visible light, respectively. Lastly, the structural properties, surface morphology, internal structure, purity, and porosity of the synthesized materials were fully evaluated.