Removal of pollutants through photocatalysis, adsorption, and electrochemical sensing by a unique plasmonic structure of palladium and strontium oxide nanoparticles sandwiched between 2D nanolayers.

ABSTRACT

The redesigned engineering building of nanocomposite (NCP) depends on metal oxides of palladium oxide (PdO) nanoparticles (NPs) conjugate with the n-type semiconductor of strontium oxide (SrO) NPs on the electron carrier surface of graphene oxide (GO) and reduce graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheet is the main target of the current work. The low efficiency of PdO (n-type) and SrO (p-type) gave an overview of the increasing generation electron efficiency via building the ohmic area on the GO and rGO surface using the Z-scheme mechanism. The efficiency of the NCP surface for destroying organic pollutants such as mixed dyes of Rhodamine B and methylene blue (RhB/MB), as against insecticides like imidacloprid, and the removal of heavy metals such as chromium ions was studied. The production of clean water against pollutants materials was investigated through adsorption and photocatalytic processes, electrochemical, and spectroscopy methods to detect the activity of NCP. The rate constant of the adsorption pollutants is 0.1776 min-1 (MB), 0.3489 min-1 (RhB), 0.3627 min-1 (imidacloprid), and 0.5729 min-1 (Cr3+). The photocatalytic rate recorded at 0.01218 min-1 (MB), 0.0096 min-1 (RhB), appeared degradation rate at 0.0086 min-1 (imidacloprid), 0.0019 min-1 (Cr6+), and 0.0471 min-1 (Cr3+). The adsorption and photocatalytic efficiency of nanocatalyst (NCP) was calculated at 91% (RhB), 93% (MB), 73% (imidacloprid), 63% (Cr3+), while the photocatalytic efficiency is 63% (RhB), 94% (MB), 86% (imidacloprid), 33% (Cr3+). The recyclability of NCP was tested for five cycles, and the efficiency was discovered at 55% after the fifth cycle. The cytotoxicity of NCP was studied to detect the safety of the fabricated materials. The study validates that the fabricated nanocomposite exhibits great potential as an innovative material for producing clean water.