PTh-rGO-TiO2 nanocomposite for photocatalytic hydrogen production and dye degradation

• Nanocomposite was synthesized by a simple wet chemical method.
• Structural and optical studies were made by XRD, UV and FTIR.
• Photocatalytic property of the prepared photocatalysts was studied by employing it in photocatalytic hydrogen production and degradation of methylene blue.
• Nanocomposite exhibited better performance among the studied photocatalysts.

In our tentative work, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) was covalently functionalized by TiO2 and polythiophene (PTh). We report for the first time the photocatalytic activity of the newly designed facile synthesized nanocomposite consisting of reduced graphene oxide, polythiophene and TiO2 via simple wet chemical method. In this paper, the metal oxide plays the major role of photocatalyst incorporated by reduced graphene oxide which is a good conductor, accompanied/wrapped by the polythiophene having good hole conducting property. The obtained conjugated system of modified reduced graphene oxide composite was characterized by various techniques including XRD, UV, SEM, TEM, FTIR and Raman spectroscopy. This nanocomposite (0.1%w/v of PTh-rGO-TiO2) has a H2 production rate of 214.08 μmol h−1 with the quantum efficiency of 14.17% at 400 nm and the composite also shows efficient degradation of methylene blue.