Abstract
A high-performance and novel photocatalyst of BiVO4-reduced Graphene Oxide (BiVO4-rGO) nanocomposite was prepared by a facile hydrothermal method. The photocatalyst was characterized by X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electronic microscopy, UV-Vis diffusion reflectance spectroscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy and UV-Vis adsorption spectroscopy, respectively. The visible-light photocatalytic activity was evaluated by oxidation of methyl orange (MO) under simulated sunlight irradiation. The results show that the BiVO4-rGO nanocomposites exhibit enhanced photocatalytic performance for the degradation of MO with a maximum removal rate of 98.95% under visible light irradiation as compared with pure BiVO4 (57.55%) due to the increased light absorption intensity and the degradation of electron-hole pair recombination in BiVO4 with the introduction of the rGO.
Highlights
A high-performance and novel photocatalyst of BiVO4-reduced Graphene Oxide (BiVO4-rGO) nanocomposite was prepared by a facile hydrothermal method
Graphene oxide has a similar structure as grapheme and the only difference is that the surface and edges of the tgraphene oxide carbon skeleton are modified by oxygen-containing groups[31]
The crystallographic structure and phase purity of the as-obtained samples are first examined by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis (Fig. 1a)
Summary
A high-performance and novel photocatalyst of BiVO4-reduced Graphene Oxide (BiVO4-rGO) nanocomposite was prepared by a facile hydrothermal method. These results have shown that the BiVO4-based composites favor the separation of photo-induced electron-hole pairs and result in enhanced photocatalytic activity in the visible range[28]. We present a simple hydrothermal method to prepare BiVO4-rGO composites using graphene oxide (GO) and Bi(NO3)3·5H2O as starting materials.
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