Synthesis and characterization of vanadium doped SnO₂ diluted magnetic semiconductor nanoparticles with enhanced photocatalytic activities

Highlights: • Pure and V-doped SnO₂ nanoparticles were synthesized using a facile sol–gel route. • The V⁴⁺ ions were incorporated into the SnO₂ lattice and located at the Sn⁴⁺ sites. • TEM images reveled that by increasing the doping content, average grain size decreased. • We show that the V-doped SnO₂ is more photoactive than undoped SnO₂. • The V-doped SnO₂ nanoparticles exhibited ferromagnetism at room temperature. - Abstract: Vanadium doped SnO₂ nanoparticles were synthesized by a facile sol–gel method. Different analytical techniques including TG/DTG, XRD, XPS, VSM and PL were used to investigate the influence of dopant concentration on structural, morphological, compositional, magnetic and optical properties of prepared nanoparticles. The XRD study showed a dominant tetragonal structure. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy proved the presence of vanadium as V⁴⁺ species. TEM image revealed that particle size decrease by doping. It was found that room temperature ferromagnetic (RTFM) behavior is strongly dependent on vanadium dopant content and the magnetic saturation dropped rapidly with increasing V content, which can be explained reasonably through bound magnetic polaron (BMP) model. A quenching in green luminescence intensity was observed in V-doped SnO₂ compared to undoped sample. The 5% V-doped SnO₂ sample showed better photocatalytic activity than undoped one in decomposing methylene blue and rhodamine B