Reduced graphene oxide three-dimensionally wrapped WO3 hierarchical nanostructures as high-performance solar photocatalytic materials

• RGO was used to wrap the 1D building blocks of hierarchical WO3 (3D wrapping).
• A facile one-step hydrothermal method was employed to achieve the 3D wrapping.
• The 3D wrapping facilitated the generation of abundant OH and O2− radials.
• The 3D wrapping achieved higher photoactivity than other types of wrapping.

A unique reduced graphene oxide (RGO) three-dimensionally wrapped WO3 (WO3@RGO) composite was synthesized via a facile one-step hydrothermal method. In this composite, the building blocks of the WO3 hierarchical structure, the nanobelts, were intimately wrapped by a layer of RGO. Due to the synergistic effect of the hierarchical structure of WO3 and intimately wrapped RGO on the surface of the nanobelts, the WO3@RGO showed much higher photocatalytic performance in degrading rhodamine B and phenol under simulated solar light irradiation than the bare WO3 and other composites in which only the mainframe of WO3 was wrapped by RGO. Moreover, the photocatalytic activity was significantly influenced by the loading amount of RGO. The optimal performance was found in the 1.2% WO3@RGO, which was about 2.50 times that of the bare WO3. Conclusively, using graphene to wrap the building blocks rather than only the mainframe of semiconductors is anticipated to be a promising method to achieve high-performance photocatalysts for solar energy conversion.

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