Zr, La-dual doped silver niobate for photocatalytic degradation of dyes under visible light irradiation.

Sol-gel-assisted synthesis of silver niobate, 1%, 5%, and 10% Zr, La-dual doped silver niobates were carried out. Analysis done using XRD showed that increasing Zr and La dual doping caused the synthesized materials to adopt an AgNbO-like structure. This is also supported by FT-IR results. FESEM revealed that the silver niobate has a prism-like morphology while Zr, La-dual doped samples are irregular in shape. EDX mapping of the 10% Zr, La dual silver niobate confirmed the presence of Nb, Ag, Zr, and La metals. When compared with the silver niobate, the band gap energy of Zr, La-dual doped silver niobates are narrower, as shown by UV-Vis DRS measurements. It was revealed that dual doping of silver niobates with Zr and La has significantly improved the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) and Rhodamine B (RhB) dyes. The 1% Zr, La-dual doped silver niobate showed the best photocatalytic results in terms of degrading MB while 10% Zr, La-dual doped silver niobate achieved the best performance when degrading RhB.