hydrothermal synthesis, characterization and catalytic performance of la3+ and sm3+ - doped bi2mn2o7 nanocatalysts for biginelli reactions

La3+ and sm3+ - doped bi2mn2o7 nanocatalysts were synthesized in 1 m naoh aqueous solution, via a stoichiometric 1:1 bi:mn molar ratio hydrothermal method at 180 °c for 48 h. bi(no3)3, mno2, la(no3)3 and sm2o3 were used as raw materials. the synthesized nanomaterials were characterized by powder x-ray diffraction (pxrd) technique. both of the la3+ and sm3+ - doped bi2mn2o7 nanomaterials were crystallized in a cubic crystal structure with space group . the morphologies of the synthesized materials were studied by field emission scanning electron microscope (fesem). the optical properties of the as-synthesized nanomaterials were studied by ultraviolet visible (uv-vis) diffuse reflectance spectra (drs). it was found that the optical band gaps were increased with dopoing la3+ and sm3+ into bi2mn2o7. catalytic performance of the synthesized nanomaterials were investigated in biginelli reactions which showed excellent efficiency. correlation between the catalytic performance with the band gap and hard/soft proportion of the metal ions was shown.