Effect of pure and REM: (Nd, Ce)-doped Dy2O3 NPs via hydrothermal method and their magnetic, optical, electrochemical, antibacterial and photocatalytic activities

Highlights: • Effect of pure and REM-doped Dy₂O₃ NPs by low cost hydrothermal method. • Dopants (Nd, Ce) played a dramatic role in modifying the properties of Dy₂O₃ NPs. • Ce-doped Dy₂O₃ exhibits good electro activity due to strong light interactions. • Ce-doped Dy₂O₃ NPs shows excellent catalytic activity compared to pure sample. Pure Dysprosium oxide (Dy₂O₃) with the spherical-morphology based material, and the rare earth metal (REM) - doped Dy₂O₃ nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized using the reaction of dysprosium (III) nitrate pentahydrate, neodymium (III) nitrate hexahydrate and cerium (III) nitrate hexahydrate by the simple cost-effective hydrothermal method, which exhibits high antibacterial effects and photocatalytic activity. The antibacterial effect of pure and (5 mol% of Nd, Ce) - doped Dy₂O₃ NPs, on Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella typhi were studied by using various concentrations. The photocatalytic activity of pure and 5 mol% of cerium doped Dy₂O₃ NPs were assessed by degrading the methyl orange (MO) dye under UV irradiation. The characterization results indicated that the XRD and TEM studies confirms the size of the prepared Dy₂O₃ NPs decreased with Nd and Ce insertion into dysprosium oxide. The particle size calculated from the Williamson-Hall (W-H) plot was consistent with TEM results. From VSM analysis, cerium doped NPs shows high saturation (Ms) magnetization than that of pure Dy₂O₃ NPs. The emission spectra and electrochemical properties are found to be dopant dependent. 5 mol% of Ce-doped Dy₂O₃ NPs shows good antibacterial effect compared to that of pure and Nd doped sample. From the above, it is observed that cerium doped NPs exhibit high photocatalytic activity than pure NPs. The mineralization of MO dye solution for pure and 5 mol% of Ce-doped samples has been confirmed by chemical oxygen demand (COD) measurements. In addition, the rate of decolorization is also confirmed by the total organic carbon (TOC) study. From the results, cerium doped sample enhances the photocatalytic performance compared to pure Dy₂O₃ NPs due to the lower recombination rate of electron-hole pairs and the presence of large surface area of the samples act as reactive facets for adsorption of MO dye molecules.