Sunlight driven degradation of organic effluents using optically active perovskite and CNTs-based nanocomposite

This study presents an efficient and cost-effective technique for the fabrication of perovskite-based materials such as lanthanum cobalt oxide (La-1), silver-doped lanthanum cobalt oxide (La-2), and silver-doped lanthanum cobalt oxide nanocomposite with carbon nanotubes (La-3) aimed to improve their photocatalytic activities against two model pollutants pendimethalin pesticides and methylene blue dye under solar irradiation. The synthesized materials were analyzed using the X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique, Fourier transforms infrared (FTIR) and UV–visible spectroscopy, confirming the successful formation of all nanomaterials and providing detailed insight into their crystalline structure, chemical composition, optical properties and photocatalytic activities. Tauc plots were used to determine the bandgaps of the synthesized catalysts, revealing values of 3.41 eV for La-1, 3.11 eV for La-2, and 2.76 eV for La-3. La-3 showed enhanced catalytic activity against pendimethalin (77.14 %) and MB (87 %). These findings underscore the potential of the La-3 sample as an effective photocatalyst for treating organic effluents in environmental remediation.