Preparation of BiVO 4-Graphene Nanocomposites and Their Photocatalytic Activity

Abstract EN

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 BiVO4 is 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 BiVO4 catalyst.

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.