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

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.