Abstract
An efficient and facile method was adopted to prepare TiO2-graphene (TG) nanocomposites with TiO2 nanoparticles uniformly distributed on graphene. By adjusting the amount of TiO2 precursor, both high and low dense TiO2 nanoparticles on graphene were effectively attained via electrostatic attraction between graphene oxide sheets and TiO2 nanoparticles. The prepared nanocomposites were characterized by various characterization techniques. The TG nanocomposite showed an excellent activity for the photodegradation of the organic dyes such as methylene blue (MB) and rose bengal (RB) under ultra violet (UV) light irradiation. The TG nanocomposite of TG 2.5 showed better photocatalytic performance than bare TiO2 nanoparticles and other composites. The enhanced activity of the composite material is attributed to the reduction in charge recombination and interaction of organic dyes with graphene. The decrease in charge recombination was evidenced from the photoluminescence (PL) spectra. The observed results suggest that the synthesized TG composites have a potential application to treat the industrial effluents, which contain organic dyes.
Highlights
Semiconductor photocatalysis has been considered as one of the superior techniques for the degradation of organic pollutants from the industrial effluents due to its ease of process, effectiveness, stability and nontoxic products.[1,2,3,4,5] Owing to its strong oxidizing power, low cost, non-toxicity and long-term stability, anatase titanium dioxide (TiO2) is one of the most studied semiconducting oxide photocatalyst
The TG nanocomposite showed an excellent activity for the photodegradation of the organic dyes such as methylene blue (MB) and rose bengal (RB) under ultra violet (UV) light irradiation
The combination of TiO2 with other materials such as carbon, Ag can be considered as a good approach to enhance the photocatalytic properties of TiO2.11,12 In several cases, TiO2-based composites displayed enhanced photocatalytic activity than that of bare TiO2.13 Graphene-based TiO2 nanocomposites have received great attention due to the synergetic effects provided by the combination of TiO2 and graphene, which can prominently improve the performance of TiO2.14,15
Summary
Semiconductor photocatalysis has been considered as one of the superior techniques for the degradation of organic pollutants from the industrial effluents due to its ease of process, effectiveness, stability and nontoxic products.[1,2,3,4,5] Owing to its strong oxidizing power, low cost, non-toxicity and long-term stability, anatase titanium dioxide (TiO2) is one of the most studied semiconducting oxide photocatalyst. Liu et al.[16] demonstrated the photocatalytic reduction of Cr (VI) using TiO2 –reduced graphene oxide (RGO) composites, prepared by microwave-assisted route. Photocatalytic decomposition of bromate ion by using P25-graphene photocatalyst obtained through hydrothermal route was demonstrated by Huang et al.[19] Wojtoniszak et al.[20] studied the photocatalytic degradation of phenol using TiO2-graphene nanocomposite as photocatalyst. Photocatalytic properties of the P25-RGO composites synthesized by different methods were demonstrated by Fan et al.[22] Though there were several reports on the synthesis and the photocatalytic properties of TiO2-graphene nanocomposites by various methods, analyzing the properties of the photocatalysts using Raman mapping technique was not widely demonstrated. The photocatalytic activity of the prepared photocatalysts was monitored by degrading the organic dyes such as MB and RB and the possible mechanism of photocatalysis for TiO2-graphene interface is proposed
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