Novel Ternary Heterogeneous Reduction Graphene Oxide (RGO)/BiOCl/TiO2 Nanocomposites for Enhanced Adsorption and Visible-Light Induced Photocatalytic Activity toward Organic Contaminants

Abstract

Herein, we describe a simple and cost-effective design for the fabrication of a novel ternary RGO/BiOCl/TiO₂ nanocomposites through a simple hydrothermal process. The prepared nanocomposites were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV–vis DRS) and N₂ adsorption–desorption analysis. Organic contaminants—such as methylene blue (MB), methyl orange (MO), rhodamine B (RhB) and amido black-10B (AB-10B)—were employed as the target pollutants to evaluate the adsorption capacity and photocatalytic activity of RGO/BiOCl/TiO₂ nanocomposites. From experimental data, it was also found that the amount of TiO₂ impressed the photocatalytic performance, and the nanocomposites with 10% of TiO₂ showed the best photocatalytic activity. The improved photocatalytic performance may be mainly due to the narrow band gap, and the charge separation and migration of RGO. Moreover, good recyclability was obtained from RGO/BiOCl/TiO₂ nanocomposites, and scavenger tests indicated that photogenerated holes were the main active species in the reaction system. Therefore, the prepared RGO/BiOCl/TiO₂ nanocomposites have broad applications foreground in pollutants purification.