Nur Safitri Febrianti, Ahmad Taufiq, Arif Hidayat, Nandang Mufti, S.T. Ulfawati Intan Subadra
Lead waste that pollutes the environment can cause a variety of serious diseases. Various efforts have been made to remove lead waste from the environment, one of which is through the development of magnetic nanoparticles-based adsorbents. In this work, the synthesis of ZnFe2O4PEG/RGO nanocomposites was carried out using coprecipitation and sonochemical methods. The structure, morphology, function groups, and adsorption performance of the ZnFe2O4-PEG/RGO nanocomposites were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). The XRD pattern showed the formation of a single phase ZnFe2O4 with a cubic spinel structure. The RGO peak was not detected because the RGO mass was much smaller inside the ZnFe2O4-PEG/RGO nanocomposites. Furthermore, refinement analysis obtained crystallite size of ZnFe2O4-PEG/RGO was 9.6 nm. The SEM result showed that the morphology of ZnFe2O4-PEG tends to be spherically distributed in RGO. Based on the FTIR results, the functional groups of ZnFe2O4-PEG/RGO nanocomposites showed the presence of Zn-O and Fe-O bonds at 529 cm-1 and 428 cm-1. Meanwhile, C-O bonds at wavenumbers 1222 cm-1 showed typical absorption of RGO. Despite Fe-O and C-O bonds, the presence of C-O-C bonds at wavenumbers of 1031 cm-1 indicates the characteristics of PEG that successfully coats ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles. Interestingly, the AAS data analysis showed that ZnFe2O4-PEG/RGO nanocomposites had excellent performance as lead heavy metal adsorbents, as evidenced by the percentage of adsorption up to 97.7%. © 2023 Trans Tech Publications Ltd, Switzerland.
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, State University of Malang, Jl. Semarang 5, Malang, 65145, Indonesia