Facile synthesis of rare earth metal dual-doped Pr₂O₃ nanostructures: Enhanced electrochemical water-splitting and antimicrobial properties

Dual metal doping is a state-of-the-art technique for improving the electrocatalytic characteristics for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and enhancement of the antibacterial activity of the material. Series of rare earth dual metal-doped Pr₂O₃ electrocatalysts (Pr₂CeMO₃, M = Sm, Yb, Er) were successfully fabricated by employing sol-gel treatment. The antimicrobial and electrochemical applications of grown products were studied along with physical properties using advanced techniques such as FESEM, EDX, XRD, FTIR, IV, CV, LSV, EIS, and ECSA. The prepared products retain the monoclinic Pr₂O₃ structure with the successful doping of rare-earth elements. From the FESEM analysis, grown products have the grainy conglomerate shape, icy monoclinic boxes, irregular lamellar shaped, and well-crystallized grains with the plate-like morphology. EDX has confirmed the presence of metal elements Pr, Ce, Sm, Yb, and Er in grown samples. The electrochemical measurements exhibited the enhancement by dual-doping, and Pr₂CeSmO₃ has an extraordinarily low overpotential of 189 mV to reach 10 mAcm⁻² density and lower Tafel slope (75 mV/dec) for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in 1.0 M KOH electrolyte. Furthermore, the electrocatalytic efficiency of Pr₂CeSmO₃ electrocatalyst for OER is extremely long-lasting for (>16 h). The antibacterial test showed that all grown single and dual-doped nanostructures have good antibacterial performance, but Pr₂CeSmO₃ exhibits strong inhibition activity towards E. coli, K. pneumoniae, S. aureus, and P. vulgaris bacterial strains with maximum inhibition zone diameter 30, 32, 35, and 31 mm, respectively. This low-cost method for the production of rare earth dual metal-doped materials holds a lot of potential for making efficient catalysts, electrochemical energy-conversion devices, and economical antibacterial agents.