Atmospheric pressure synthesis of nitrogen doped graphene quantum dots for fabrication of BiOBr nanohybrids with enhanced visible-light photoactivity and photostability

A facile bottom-up approach for producing nitrogen doped graphene quantum dots (N-GQDs) was carried out by the carbonization of ammonium citrate under atmospheric pressure. And further, N-GQDs/BiOBr nanohybrids with N-GQDs uniformly distributed on BiOBr nanoplates were fabricated by a one-pot solvothermal method using the proposed N-GQDs as the precursor. As an excellent enhancer, the doped N-GQDs could improve the photoactivity and photostability of BiOBr nanoplates in the N-GQDs/BiOBr nanohybrids. Moreover, the photoactivity of N-GQDs/BiOBr nanohybrids was influenced remarkably by the content of the doped N-GQDs, and the results indicated that 3 wt% N-GQDs/BiOBr nanohybrids showed the optimal photoactivity. The N-GQDs/BiOBr nanohybrids showed excellent performance in the photoelectrochemical detection of glutathione as well as photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B. And a possible mechanism of N-GQDs on the enhancement photoactivity and photostability of N-GQDs/BiOBr nanohybrids was also proposed. This gave insights into N-GQDs/BiOBr nanohybrids and described a novel method to design and fabricate high photoactivity nanohybrids related to N-GQDs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.