Rapid microwave-assisted synthesis of silver decorated-reduced graphene oxide nanoparticles with enhanced photocatalytic activity under visible light

A facile, fast, and scalable microwave irradiation (MWI) method for the synthesis of Ag nanoparticles (Ag NPs) dispersed on graphene sheets has been developed. The reduction of graphene oxide takes place in ethanol solution within 2 min of MWI without any additional reducing agent or complicated treatment. The morphology and microstructure of the as-prepared hybrid were characterized by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images. The result showed the Ag NPs with an average size of 5–10 nm decorated on the rGO sheets. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) determined that the crystallographic structure of Ag is face-centered cubic and there was a strong interaction between Ag NPs and rGO sheets. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) showed that GO had been reduced to rGO in our hybrid. Moreover, visible photocatalytic activity of the rGO–Ag nanocomposites was tested using Rhodamine B (RhB) as the model contaminant. This result indicates that rGO–Ag nanocomposites display distinctly enhanced photocatalytic activities. The investigation gave a promise to the development of original yet highly efficient graphene-based photocatalysts that utilize visible light as an energy source.