Development of reduced graphene oxide/CuBi2O4 hybrid for enhanced photocatalytic behavior under visible light irradiation

Reduced graphene oxide (RGO)/CuBi2O4 (GCB) composites were synthesized, through a novel single step solvothermal process. Properties of the synthesized composites such as functionality, morphology, composition and optical properties were characterized by FT-IR, Raman, XRD, FE-SEM, EDAX, HR-TEM, UV-DRS and PL analysis. Spinel structured CuBi2O4 (CB) was incorporated into RGO at various percentages. Among the developed composites, 2 wt% GO incorporated GCB2 composite shows 95% and 87% degradation efficiency for methylene blue and methyl orange, respectively in comparison to pure CB and other composites. In addition, the enhanced photocatalytic activity of CuBi2O4 has been explained and the mechanism attributing to the excellent performance of GCB has been proposed.