Oxygen vacancies generation in CeO2 via Y/Nd co-doping with accelerated charge separation by decorating on rGO sheets for sunlight-driven photodegradation of hazardous dyes

In the present study, Y/Nd co-doped CeO2 (CeYNdO2) nanoparticles and rGO-supported CeYNdO2/rGO nanocomposite were synthesized via sol-gel route. The obtained nanocomposite has outstanding redox features, highlighting a large surface area, excellent light-capturing response, abundant oxygen vacancies, remarkable photodestruction performance, and promising stability compared with CeYNdO2 nanoparticles. Especially, using the optimal condition, the photodestruction efficiencies of MB, SO, and EY reached up to 99.2 %, 71.8 %, and 99.7 % only in 60 min of irradiation for CeYNdO2/rGO nanocomposite, respectively. The several influencing parameters including catalyst dose, dye amount, pH variation, and main reactive radicals were tested to evaluate the CeYNdO2/rGO nanocomposite performance. The stability of the CeYNdO2/rGO nanocomposite was also tested for the repetitive 6th cycles. Moreover, the probable photodestruction pathways, and reasonably boosted performance were thoroughly investigated given in Scheme- 1. The obtained results highlight that the Y/Nd doping and rGO synergy is promising for environmental remediation, and propose a reasonable low-cost strategy to modify the performance of CeO2-based composite materials, especially in photodestruction of toxic dyes.