Improved photocatalytic activity of Ce-doped NiO nanoparticles against methylene blue and rhodamine B dyes

Abstract The current study intended to investigate the photocatalytic efficiency of synthesised pure and Ce-doped NiO nanoparticles for the degradation of organic contaminants, particularly Methylene blue and Rhodamine B dyes. Initially, the co precipitation method was used to synthesize these nanoparticles.The size of the crystallites was determined using X-ray diffraction analysis,which also verified that the prepared nanoparticles included a single cubic phase. In addition, several characterisation techniques were used to assess the band gap energy, functional group, phase identification, shape, surface area, and oxidation states of the synthesised nanoparticles' elements. These techniques included UV-vis, FT-IR,FESEM, TEM, BET, and XPS. It was demonstrated that Ce-doped NiO nanoparticles had a 98% and 79% degradation efficiency for MB and RhB dyes respectively.