Nitrogen doped graphene oxide modified WSe2 nanorods for visible light photocatalysis

Nitrogen doped graphene oxide (NG) modified WSe2 nanorod composites (WSe2/NG) were prepared by a hydrothermal synthesis route. The synthesized samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy(DRS) and elemental analysis. Using methylene blue (MB) as a target organic dye, WSe2/NG nanocomposites exhibited significant enhancement in photocatalytic degradation of MB under visible light irradiation compared with WSe2. That was mainly attributed to the strong adsorption of MB, excellent electrical conductivity and charge separation features of the NG, leading to effectively restrained electron-hole pair recombination of WSe2 nanorods. Among the hybrid photocatalysts, WSe2/50NG (50 wt% of NG) exhibited the highest photocatalytic activity with a rate constant of 0.0572 min−1 for the degradation of the MB in aqueous solution under visible light irradiation, and the removal efficiency reached 99.3% which was 2.4 times higher than that of WSe2. In addition, WSe2/NG also showed higher stability and good reusability.