Promoting photocatalytic interaction of boron doped reduced graphene oxide supported BiFeO3 nanocomposite for visible-light-induced organic pollutant degradation

Abstract

Tuning the morphology of the semiconductor heterojunction photocatalyst has attracted extensive attention for effective photocatalytic performance in the process of wastewater treatment. The combination of boron doped reduced graphene oxide (B-rGO) supported by Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) nanocomposite was fabricated via simple one-pot mild hydrothermal synthesis. Notably, the non-metal doping with reduced graphene oxide leads to an extra advantage in improving photophysical properties such as electrochemical impendence spectroscopy (EIS) and photocurrent measurements, which significantly increases the charge carrier recombination factor due to the density state value near to the Fermi energy level in the system. The intimate layer contact between the B-rGO and BiFeO3 nanocomposite is well established by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-DRS), and Vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). Furthermore, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) provide clear evidence for decorating hierarchically layered nanocomposite. The superior performance of the developed nanocomposite degradation efficiency was revealed towards Tetracycline (TC), and Rhodamine B (RhB) was chosen as an ideal model pollutant. The degradation efficiency was achieved for TC (86.7%) and RhB (99.4%). Also, the developed photocatalyst exhibited excellent photostability after four consecutive stability cycles. Finally, the non-metal doping technology was found to demonstrate excellent potential features in the field of environmental wastewater and pharmaceutical water detoxication.