Enhanced Degradation of Phenol by Visible Light-Assisted Fenton Catalytic Activity of Copper-Substituted Neodymium Ferrite

This work aims to prepare copper-substituted NdFeO3 (NdFe1 - xCuxO3, x = 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, and 0.20) photocatalysts via hydrothermal method and study their visible light-assisted Fenton catalytic activities for phenol degradation. The Cu-doped NdFeO3 photocatalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS), N-2 adsorption-desorption, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and UV-Vis absorption analysis. The results revealed that samples with lower Cu contents in NdFe1 - xCuxO3 exhibited higher photo-Fenton catalytic performances than pure and highly doped NdFeO3. Among them, NdFe0.85Cu0.15O3 showed the highest photo-Fenton catalytic activity for phenol degradation under visible light, reaching a removal rate of 98.4% when using 1 g/L catalyst in the presence of 10 mM H2O2 at pH 5. It has been demonstrated that Cu-NdFeO3-15 has good stability and reusability, and it also exhibits great potential for usage in photo-Fenton degradation of phenol under visible light irradiation.