Synthesis and characterization of magnetically separable visible-light photocatalyst for removal of methyl orange

Semiconductor photocatalysis has received considerable attention because of its potential applicability in the photodegradation of water pollution. The recent issue concerning the photocatalyst requires not only its excellent performance, but also its recovery. For this purpose, recently combinations of conjugated polymers with inorganic materials for enhanced visible light responsive photocatalysis has received great attention. The unique physical and chemical properties of conducting polymers have made them significant attractive materials. Among these delocalized conjugated materials, polythiophenes (PTh) polymers have been widely used because of their good thermal and chemical stability. In this work, zinc ferrite–polythiophene photocatalyst is successfully prepared by in situ oxidative polymerization of thiophene monomers in present of zinc ferrite. These composites were characterized by different techniques and photocatalytic studies were carried out for degradation of methylene orange (MO) from aqueous media. The result shows that the synthesized products induced a high photocatalytic activity for the degradation of the MO dye by using visible light irradiation. The synthesized sample can be separated easily by an external magnetic and reused twice more, and its photocatalytic activity was virtually unchanged, although a slight decrease was observed after each run.