[Display omitted] • One-step auto-combustion method for rapid synthesis of Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles. • Facile, gram-scale and tunable synthesis of Fe 3 O 4 , α-Fe 2 O 3 and γ-Fe 2 O 3 phases. • Observation of improved ferromagnetic and superparamagnetic properties. • Manifestation of an enhanced solar light driven photocatalytic efficiencies. • Achievement of 98% RhB degradation in 3 h and 2.1 mmol/h/g of H 2 production by Fe 3 O 4. We report the solution auto-combustion (AC) process for the rapid synthesis of Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles derived from the sol–gel (SG) process. The citric acid (CA) and tartaric acid (TA) is used as gelling agents in the SG process, where the citric acid turns into a fuel that combusts the gel and yields a highly magnetic crystalline phase Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles in one step with an average particle size of 50 nm. In contrast, the citric acid at different concentrations and tartaric acid at any concentrations do not lead to any combustion process and yield amorphous iron oxides. Upon annealing, these CA and TA derived iron oxide samples are turned to crystalline phase α-Fe 2 O 3 particles. In contrast, the as-synthesized AC sample (i.e. Fe 3 O 4) is oxidized to γ-Fe 2 O 3 phase, which is confirmed from their respective XRD, Rietveld refinement and XPS studies. All the synthesized iron oxide phases showed broad visible light absorption. The room temperature M−H hysteresis curves obtained from VSM revealed that the Fe 3 O 4 and α-Fe 2 O 3 /γ-Fe 2 O 3 phases exhibit super-paramagnetic and ferromagnetic properties, respectively. The photocatalytic efficiencies of the samples are found to be in the order of Fe 3 O 4 > γ-Fe 2 O 3 > α-Fe 2 O 3 with 98, 87, 79/73% degradation of rhodamine B dye at the end of 3 h and H 2 evolution rate over these systems is found to be 2.1, 1.3 and 0.92/0.89 mmol/h/g, respectively under simulated solar light irradiation. The photocatalytic recycle studies demonstrated that all the synthesized photocatalysts possess excellent chemical and photo-stabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]