Morphology mediated photocatalysis and room temperature ferromagnetism in cerium oxide

Present work is focused on fine-tuning of magnetic and photocatalytic properties of three samples of cerium oxide nano/micro-sized particles synthesized via different chemical routes. X-ray diffraction measurement infers the growth of single phase cubic fluorite structure of pure CeO2 with a space group of Fm3m. The route of synthesis significantly altered the morphology and particle size as evident from high resolution transmission electron microscopy. Raman spectra and XPS confirmed the existence of oxygen vacancies defects in CeO2 matrix. In this article, investigations of magnetic properties and photocatalytic activity of rose Bengal dye in the presence of UV light have been carried out. For SG, CO, and HB samples, room temperature ferromagnetism was observed with small magnetizations of 2.21, 16.8, and 3.58 emu/g x 10-4 respectively. The photocatalytic efficiency of CO sample was 76.3% for degradation of rose Bengal dye on UV illumination for 140 min. Thus, morphology dependent enhanced ferromagnetic and superior photocatalytic behavior of CeO2 make it a multifunctional material for its use as a photocatalyst for organic dye decomposition and in spintronics devices.