Fabrication of single tungsten / copper / cobalt atom oxide anchored BiVO4-rGO for boosting photodegradation of norfloxacin and rhodamine B

Abstract

Herein, we fabricated a single metal atom oxide (W, Cu and Co) anchored on the interstitials atomic line of BiVO4 with reduced graphene oxide (rGO-ED-BiVO4-WCuCo) by simple sonication process, which demonstrated a good photocatalytic degradation of organic contaminants. Through examination of the physical and chemical characteristics of the prepared material discovered that the higher density loading of single metal atom oxide (SMAO) uniformly on interstitials atomic line of BiVO4 improved its ability to absorb visible light. The photocatalytic efficiency of nanocomposites has been evaluated in the presence of visible light using the model chemicals norfloxacin (NF) and rhodamine B (RB). Comparison of pristine heteropoly acid, BiVO4, and nanocomposites rGO-ED-BiVO4-WCo-30, rGO-ED-BiVO4-WCu-30 and rGO-ED-BiVO4-WCuCo-20, demonstrated that employing rGO-ED-BiVO4-WCuCo-30 increased the degradation efficiency of NF and RB to 95.6% and 97.8%, proving that W/Cu/Co deposition is a useful method for boosting BiVO4's photocatalytic activity. The enhanced electron transfer capacity may be attributed in large part to the incorporation of W, Cu, and Co oxide, which acts as a potent electron driving force. After five cycles of reusing rGO-ED-BiVO4-WCuCo-30, a slight decrease in the degradation efficiency was noticed. LC-MS identified the generation of possible intermediates along the norfloxacin degradation pathway. Overall, a simple technique to synthesize SMAO catalysts for the visible light mediated heterogeneous photocatalytic degradation of pharmaceutical and dye contaminants is reported.