Graphene/BiVO4/TiO2 nanocomposite: tuning band gap energies for superior photocatalytic activity under visible light

A facile, ultrasonic wave-assisted one pot hydrothermal method has been developed to fabricate reduced graphene oxide/bismuth vanadate/titanium oxide (RGO/BiVO4/TiO2) ternary nanocomposites. By utilizing graphene oxide (GO) as multifunctional structure, RGO/BiVO4/TiO2 (GBT) with diverse percentage composition possessing varying band gap energies is obtained. XRD and Raman spectroscopy evince formation of tetragonal and monoclinic phases of BiVO4. The band gap energies of the components of the composite were determined by applying modified Kubelka-Munk function on UV-Vis DRS data. Tuning of band gap energy of the BiVO4 and TiO2 were simultaneously achieved by modifying the concentrations of GO and TiO2 during synthesis. The GBT exhibited enhanced photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) under visible light irradiation. The relative photocatalytic activity rates of the composites in GBT series are in agreement with the photoluminescence data. The mechanism behind the activity suggests GO acting as an electron trapper and TiO2 behaving as an efficient mediating co-catalyst. The band gap energy tuning led to reduction in time needed for complete MB degradation from 40 min with RGO/BiVO4 to 10 min with the ternary composite GBT. It is expected that the work would encourage new vistas to engineer different combinations of graphene based ternary composites which might lead to potential applications guided by band gap tuning.