Research PaperFacile in-situ design strategy to disperse TiO2 nanoparticles on graphene for the enhanced photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine 6G

•Successful preparation of composites grounded on reduced graphene oxide and TiO2.•A facile and green in-situ synthetic strategy was applied and optimized.•Beneficial interaction of GO and TiO2 was found on Rh 6G photocatalytic degradation.•TiO2@rGO(10 wt%, 120 min) gives 3.5 times higher photocatalytic ability than bare TiO2.

Photogenerated electron/hole recombination greatly limits the catalytic efficiency of TiO2, and recently modification with graphene substance has been regarded as an effective way to enhance the photocatalytic performance of TiO2. When referring to the fabrication of graphene based materials, the reduction process of graphene oxide has been demonstrated to be a key step. Therefore, it is highly required to develop an efficient and simple route for the GO reduction and the formation of TiO2@rGO composites. In this study, we have demonstrated a facile and environmentally friendly strategy for in-situ preparation of the TiO2@rGO “dyade” hybrid and systematically investigated the photodegradation efficiency of the resultant composite by utilizing rhodamine 6G as the model pollutant. The obtained TiO2@rGO has a significant enhancement in photo energy adsorption leading to the effective photocatalytic degradation reactions. The results indicated that the best performance was conducted by the TiO2@rGO (10 wt%, 120 min's irradiation), which exhibited more than triple the higher photodegradation rate than commercial TiO2 (P25) nanoparticles mainly due to two aspects, the rapid separation of h+/e− and to improve adsorption. This work provides new insight into the synthesis of TiO2@rGO composites as a high performance photocatalyst for the degradation of organic contaminant.

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