Investigation of photocatalytic properties of molybdenum disulfide incorporated lanthanum ferrite nanocomposites

Abstract

Few-layer MoS2 nanosheets incorporated LaFeO3 nanocomposite has been synthesized successfully. LaFeO3 nanoparticles have homogeneous surface morphology with 50~70 nm particle size and a uniform distribution of LaFeO3 nanoparticles over the MoS2 nanosheets is observed. The bandgaps of LaFeO3 and LaFeO3-MoS2 are estimated as 2.07 and 2.012. Again, lower recombination rate of the electron-hole pairs for LaFeO3-MoS2 nanocomposite has been recorded. The photocatalytic dye degradation efficiency of LaFeO3-MoS2 nanocomposite has been recorded 96% and active species trapping experiments reveal that the superoxide (O2-) radicals play a significant role in RhB degradation. Further, 712 µmol/g catalyst hydrogen gas was produced using LaFeO3-MoS2 nanocomposite. LaFeO3-MoS2 nanocomposite has revealed ferroelectric behaviour with a remnant polarization of 0.012 μC/cm2 using 50 kV electric field at room temperature (RT). The M-H (magnetization vs. magnetic field) hysteresis loops have revealed that LaFeO3-MoS2 nanocompoaite shows paramagnetic behaviour at RT unlike LaFeO3 nanoparticles which exhibits superparamagnetism.