Hydrothermal synthesis of graphene/TiO2/CdS nanocomposites as efficient visible-light-driven photocatalysts

The construction of semiconductor nanocomposites has been considered as one of the efficient methods to improve photocatalytic activity. Herein, we have prepared the ternary reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-TiO2-CdS nanocomposites by firstly hydrolyzing tetrabutyl titanate in GO solution to prepare GO-TiO2 precursor, and then hydrothermally treating GO-TiO2/Cd(NO3)(2)/L-cysteine solution. Typically, rGO-TiO2-0.55CdS (Cd/Ti molar ratio: 0.55/1) consists of TiO2 spheres (similar to 1 mu m) and rGO framework, whose surfaces were uniformly decorated with CdS nanoparticles (similar to 30 nm). Under the illumination of visible-light, rGO-TiO2-0.55CdS can degrade 90.3% methylene blue (MB) dye and 65.3% parachlorophenol (4-CP) in 60 min, which are higher than those (55.9% for MB and 28.4% for 4-CP) by the binary rGO-TiO2. In addition, the recycling experiment confirms that rGO-TiO2-0.55CdS nanocomposite is essentially stable. Therefore, rGO-TiO2-CdS nanocomposites have great potential as effective and stable visible light -driven photocatalysts. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.