Enhanced photodegradation of reactive blue dye using Ga and Gd as catalyst in reduced graphene oxide-based TiO2 composites

Abstract

Ga-TiO2/rGO and Gd-TiO2/rGO with varying Ga and Gd contents (0, 0.3, 0.6, 1.0 and 2.0 wt%) were successfully synthesized using a simple synthesis process. The synthesized composites have been characterized by Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Transmission electronmicroscopy (TEM). The photodegradation of the dye were detected by UV-visible spectroscopy. The degradation and the pseudo first order kinetics were investigated the efficiency of photocatalyst composites. We have found that the addition Ga and Gd metal into photocatalyst composites enhanced the photodegradation of reactive blue dye. Especially, the photocatalyst composite of 1.0 Gd-TiO2/rGO with containing 1.0 wt% of Gd exhibited the highest photodegradation and the kinetic constant. Under UV irradiation, the degradation efficiency of dye by 0.6Gd-TiO2/rGO composite was 7.1 times more than that by the pure TiO2.