PTh-rGO-TiO2 nanocomposite for photocatalytic hydrogen production and dye degradation

In our tentative work, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) was covalently functionalized by TiO2 and polythiophene (PTh). We report for the first time the photocatalytic activity of the newly designed facile synthesized nanocomposite consisting of reduced graphene oxide, polythiophene and TiO2 via simple wet chemical method. In this paper, the metal oxide plays the major role of photocatalyst incorporated by reduced graphene oxide which is a good conductor, accompanied/wrapped by the polythiophene having good hole conducting property. The obtained conjugated system of modified reduced graphene oxide composite was characterized by various techniques including XRD, UV, SEM, TEM, FTIR and Raman spectroscopy. This nanocomposite (0.1%w/v of PTh-rGO-TiO2) has a H-2 production rate of 214.08 mu mol h(-1) with the quantum efficiency of 14.17% at 400 nm and the composite also shows efficient degradation of methylene blue. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.