Green arbitrated synthesis of Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles with nanorod structure from pomegranate leaves and Congo red dye degradation studies for water treatment

Abstract An efficient, cost effective and eco-friendly approach has been developed for the synthesis of Fe 3 O 4 magnetic nanorods (MNRs) using aqueous extract of Pomegranate leaves (PG). The synthesized PG-Fe 3 O 4 MNRs were characterized by using different microscopic and spectroscopic techniques. The synthesized PG-Fe 3 O 4 MNRs confirmed by Raman scattering and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveal that PG-Fe 3 O 4 MNRs are well dispersed with uniform size (45–60 nm) and exhibits high specific surface area of 14.6 m 2  g − 1 calculated using BET adsorption-desorption method. The magnetic behavior of PG-Fe 3 O 4 nanorods was studied using vibrational sample magnetometer (VSM) at 300 K, and the results obtained shows enhanced magnetic properties of saturation magnetization (M s , ~ 59.0 emu/g), remnant magnetization (M r, ~ 15.5 emu/g) and coercivity (H c , 220 Oe). Furthermore, we also reported the use of the synthesized PG-Fe 3 O 4 MNRs as an adsorbent to dispose of the Congo red (CR) containing waste water, which exhibited more favorable adsorptive properties as compared to the bulk-metal oxides with low surface area.