Ultrasound-accelerated synthesis of uniform DyVO₄ nanoparticles as high activity visible-light-driven photocatalyst

In order to obtain a highly efficient photocatalyst for water treatment, the sonochemical procedure applied to fabrication of excellent DyVO₄ nanoparticles. A comparative study between two different synthesis routes (precipitation and sonochemical) was investigated in this work. Also, the influence of anionic, cationic and nonionic surfactant was studied on the formation of uniform particles. Further, the photocatalytic performance over the DyVO₄ nanoparticles was studied under visible light by modifying the operational variables. Investigation of the photocatalytic mechanism process was conducted using hole scavengers for capturing reactive species. It was found that the DyVO₄ nanoparticles sonochemically (a ultrasound probe with power of 60 W (18 KHz)) synthesized in presence of CTAB as an optimum condition, are uniform with average size of ~24 nm. The results showed that DyVO₄ could remove near 88% of erythrosine, under the optimum condition of 0.05 g catalyst dosage and at initial pH 4. The DyVO₄ maintained relatively high stability and reusability removal for erythrosine after five repeated cycles. The results could provide effective functional materials for elimination of chemical contaminants from wastewater through the photocatalytic process.