Kinetics of Photocatalytic Degradation of Methylene Blue by TiO₂-Graphene Nanocomposites.

Reduced graphene oxide (RGO)/TiO₂ nanocomposite was successfully prepared by UV-assisted photocatalytic reduction of graphene oxide (XGO) by TiO₂ nanoparticles in ethanol. The effects of XGO and RGO addition in TiO₂were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffractometer (XRD), diffuse reflectance UV-vis spectrophotometer (UV-vis), fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), photoluminescence (PL), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) and Barrett-Joiner-Halenda (BJH) porosity analysis. The photocatalytic activity of prepared nanocomposites was evaluated from the kinetics of the photocatalytic degradation of cationic methylene blue dye under UV irradiation. Bandgap, the electron-hole recombination, specific surface area, surface functional groups, and adsorption capacity of nanocomposites were found to play a significant role in the degradation. The results revealed that RGO/TiO₂ and XGO/TiO₂ nanocomposites exhibited efficient charge separation and enhanced photocatalytic activity, compared to pristine TiO₂. Nearly 500% improvement was observed in this work.