Bifunctional strontium-doped barium oxide nanorods as promising photocatalysts and electrodes for energy storage applications

It is critical to design highly efficient, clean, and renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels and mitigate their harmful impacts on the environment. Two effective approaches for replacing fossil fuels are electrochemical energy storage devices and photocatalysis. Herein, for the first time, strontium-doped barium oxide nanorods (Sr-BaO NRs) were synthesized using a facile co-precipitation technique and characterized with different analytical techniques to explore their physical, electrochemical, and photocatalytic properties. The successful formation of Sr-BaO NRs and their structural variations were confirmed by XRD, Raman, and FT-IR results. UV-Vis analysis showed that the bandgap of BaO was decreased by increasing the Sr concentration. SEM micrographs confirmed the formation of nanorods. The findings of the photocatalytic experiments showed excellent photodegradation efficiencies against methylene blue (MB) (95.55 %), methyl orange (MO) (98 %), and rhodamine-B (RhB) (96.33 %) dyes after 60, 70, and 90 min, respectively under UV light irradiation. Higher stability up to five cycles was shown in the recyclability experiments employing the optimized catalyst. The electrochemical properties of Sr-BaO NRs were also studied for the first time. 4 % Sr-BaO NRs offered an exceptional specific capacitance of 925.2 F/g, and a good energy density of 32.12 Wh/Kg with a higher power density of 750 W/kg at a current density of 3 A/g. The development of such affordable and efficient photocatalysts and electrode materials is desired for future environment protection and energy storage applications.