Advanced nanostructured photocatalysts based on reduced graphene oxide-flower-like Bi2WO6 composites for an augmented simulated solar photoactivity activity

• A simple route was proposed to prepare flower-like Bi2WO6 and RGO/Bi2WO6.
• Cipro HCl was degraded firstly by RGO/Bi2WO6 under the visible-light.
• 2% RGO/Bi2WO6 exhibited the best removal efficiency.

A simple hydrothermal process was proposed to prepare the flower-like Bi2WO6 architectures, and the as-synthesized Bi2WO6 photocatalysts were further processed with the prepared graphene oxide (GO) to form novel reduced graphene oxide (RGO)/Bi2WO6 composites. The nano-materials were characterized with the help of XRD, XPS, SEM, FTIR, UV-DRS, PL techniques to investigate their morphological, physical, optical, and photochemical properties. Photocatalytic performances of the pure flower-like Bi2WO6 architectures and RGO/Bi2WO6 composites were compared and evaluated through the degradation of ciprofloxacin hydrochloride (Cipro HCl) wastewater under the simulated visible light. It was found that the RGO/Bi2WO6 composites displayed enhanced visible light-driven photocatalytic activities. It might be that the RGO loading not only effectively suppressed the electron–hole recombination, but also increased the light absorption ability. The effects of operating condition involved in the photocatalytic process were further examined, and the cycle-stability experiment demonstrated that as-obtained 2% RGO/Bi2WO6 photocatalysts had good photocatalytic repeatability.

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