Abstract
We prepared BiVO4-graphene nanocomposites by using a facile single-step method and characterized the material by x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible diffuse-reflection spectroscopy, and three-dimensional fluorescence spectroscopy. The results show that graphene oxide in the catalyst was thoroughly reduced. The BiVO4is densely dispersed on the graphene sheets, which facilitates the transport of electrons photogenerated in BiVO4, thereby leading to an efficient separation of photogenerated carriers in the coupled graphene-nanocomposite system. For degradation of rhodamine B dye under visible-light irradiation, the photocatalytic activity of the synthesized nanocomposites was over ∼20% faster than for pure BiVO4catalyst. To study the contribution of electrons and holes in the degradation reaction, silver nitrate and potassium sodium tartrate were added to the BiVO4-graphene photocatalytic reaction system as electron-trapping agent and hole-trapping agent, respectively. The results show that holes play the main role in the degradation of rhodamine B.
Highlights
In recent years, nanometer photocatalysis technology has attracted widespread interest because of its potential applications in water splitting and environmental remediation [1, 2]
Almost all the diffraction peaks of pure BiVO4 and BiVO4-graphene can be assigned to monoclinic BiVO4 (JCPDS 14-0688), which is the most active photocatalyst under visible-light irradiation [14]. This explains why the photocatalysts remain in a monoclinic structure and why the phase of BiVO4 does not change after adding the graphene-oxide solution
No diffraction peak typical of graphite or graphene oxide appears in the X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern of BiVO4-graphene
Summary
Nanometer photocatalysis technology has attracted widespread interest because of its potential applications in water splitting and environmental remediation [1, 2]. BiVO4, which has a band gap of 2.4 eV, is an ideal visiblelight photocatalytic material for recycling polluted water It has the advantages of low cost, environmental friendliness, and high stability against photocorrosion [9, 10]. Its structure and properties are similar to those of graphene and it is produced and commonly used as a precursor for grapheme [13,14,15, 24] Inspired by these concepts, we report the design and synthesis of graphene-based nanocomposites, using BiVO4-graphene nanocomposites as an example, with the goal of achieving highly efficient photocatalytic properties driven by visible light
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