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Journal of Materials Science

, Volume 55, Issue 4, pp 1577–1591 | Cite as

Polymer-supported graphene–TiO2 doped with nonmetallic elements with enhanced photocatalytic reaction under visible light

  • Yuanwang Wu
  • Haiyan Mu
  • Xuejun CaoEmail author
  • Xiao HeEmail author
Electronic materials
First Online:
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Abstract

Exploiting photocatalysts with environmental friendliness, noble-metal-free and high efficiency is a great challenge for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution under visible light. In this work, we had successfully loaded anatase titanium dioxide with a special graphene structure [the reduced graphene oxide loaded on amine-functionalized poly (styrene/glycidyl methacrylate) (rGO/PSGM) microspheres. This special structure could greatly improve the catalytic performance of TiO2 in the visible light. The nonmetallic elements (C, N, F, P and S) were doped with TiO2 to further improve the performance of the composite photocatalysts in the visible-light region. After the first-principles density functional theory calculation, the calculated results of the density of states and dielectric function showed that the doped N element has the highest optical absorption capacity. We had proved this through experimental synthesis. Under the full-wavelength illumination, the degradation rate was 20 times higher than that of physically mixed sample; under the visible light, the k value of the degradation rate was 0.0046 min−1 while physically mixed sample had almost no reaction within 5 h. Our study provides a promising approach to achieving efficient photocatalytic reaction under visible light based on TiO2 and graphene without precious metals.

Abbreviations

rGO

Reduced graphene oxide

PSGM

Poly (styrene/glycidyl methacrylate)

DFT

Density functional theory

DOS

Density of states

AIBN

Tetrabutyl titanate, 2-methylpropionitrile

GMA

Glycidyl methacrylate

PVP

Polyvinyl pyrrolidone

MO

Methyl orange

PAW

Projector-augmented plane wave

VB

Valence band

CB

Conduction band

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Notes

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© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, Department of BioengineeringEast China University of Science and TechnologyShanghaiChina
  2. 2.Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Molecular Therapeutics and New Drug Development, School of Chemistry and Molecular EngineeringEast China Normal UniversityShanghaiChina

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