One-step synthesis of Bi2MoO6/reduced graphene oxide aerogel composite with enhanced adsorption and photocatalytic degradation performance for methylene blue

Bi2MoO6/reduced graphene oxide aerogel (BMO/GA) composite with enhanced adsorptivity and photocatalysis has been successfully synthesized through a simple one-step solvothermal method. During solvothermal synthesis, Bi2MoO6 (BMO) as an efficient photocatalyst, which size was controllable, was uniformly distributed and well embedded into the pores of the 3D porous structure reduced graphene oxide aerogel (GA) and formed the 3D porous structure BMO/GA composite. The methylene blue (MB) was selected as a simulated pollutant, and the removal rate of BMO/GA composite toward MB was about 2.1 times as high as the pure BMO, which reached up 98.3% in 100 min. The BMO/GA composite with greatly improved adsorptivity and photocatalytic activity has some advantages of low-cost, ease of preparation and facile of recovery from target contaminant solution. The excellent adsorption and photocatalytic degradation performance of BMO/GA composite is mainly owing to the BMO can be exactly embedded into the pores of GA and the RGO provided conductive electron channels for dispersing electrons. The synergistic effect of BMO and GA on enhancing the adsorption and photocatalytic degradation toward MB was also discussed by a proposed photocatalytic mechanism.