Facile fabricating the polyoxometalates functionalized graphene nanocomposite applied in electrocatalytic reduction

Abstract

The well dispersed and porous PMo12-rGO nanocomposite was synthesized via a chemical reduction method by the facile and economical reducing agent of thiourea. By optimizing the amount of reducing agent of thiourea, PMo12 was reduced to heteropoly blue, and then reacted with GO to assemble PMo12 clusters onto the rGO by the strong interaction between rGO and PMo12. The SEM, HTEM, FT-IR, UV–vis, XPS and Raman were performed to verify the structure of the PMo12-rGO nanocomposite. The as-prepared PMo12-rGO nanocomposite exhibits high stability and excellent electrocatalytic activity towards the reduction of nitrite and hydrogen peroxide compared with individual PMo12 catalysts, which could be mostly attributed to the synergistic effects of rGO and PMo12. The method is facile, economical and suitable for mass production and common POMs, which opens a new way to fabricate a wide range of hybrid materials using different type of polyoxometalates, and such as-prepared materials have potential applications in catalysis, electrochemisty and related fields.