Construction of ternary hybrid layered reduced graphene oxide supported g-C3N4-TiO2 nanocomposite and its photocatalytic hydrogen production activity
- authored by
- Hafeez Yusuf Hafeez, Sandeep Kumar Lakhera, Sankeerthana Bellamkonda, G.Ranga Rao, M.V. Shankar, Detlef Bahnemann, Bernaurdshaw Neppolian
- Abstract
Reduced graphene oxide (rGO) supported g-C
3N
4-TiO
2 ternary hybrid layered photocatalyst was prepared via ultrasound assisted simple wet impregnation method with different mass ratios of g-C
3N
4 to TiO
2. The synthesized composite was investigated by various characterization techniques, such as XRD, FTIR, Raman Spectra, FE-SEM, HR-TEM, UV– vis DRS Spectra, XPS Spectra and PL Spectra. The optical band gap of g-C
3N
4-TiO
2/rGO nanocomposite was found to be red shifted to 2.56 eV from 2.70 eV for bare g-C
3N
4. It was found that g-C
3N
4 and TiO
2 in a mass ratio of 70:30 in the g-C
3N
4-TiO
2/rGO nanocomposite, exhibits the highest hydrogen production activity of 23,143 μmol g
−1h
−1 through photocatalytic water splitting. The observed hydrogen production rate from glycerol-water mixture using g-C
3N
4-TiO
2/rGO was found to be 78 and 2.5 times higher than g-C
3N
4 (296 μmol g
−1 h
−1) and TiO
2 (11,954 μmol g
−1 h
−1), respectively. A direct contact between TiO
2 and rGO in the g-C
3N
4-TiO
2/rGO nanocomposite produces an additional 10,500 μmol g
−1h
−1 of hydrogen in 4 h of photocatalytic reaction than the direct contact between g-C
3N
4 and rGO. The enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production activity of the resultant nanocomposite can be ascribed to the increased visible light absorption and an effective separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs at the interface of g-C
3N
4-TiO
2/rGO nanocomposite. The effective separation and transportation of photogenerated charge carriers in the presence of rGO sheet was further confirmed by a significant quenching of photoluminescence intensity of the g-C
3N
4-TiO
2/rGO nanocomposite. The photocatalytic hydrogen production rate reported in this work is significantly higher than the previously reported work on g-C
3N
4 and TiO
2 based photocatalysts.
- Organisation(s)
-
Institute of Technical Chemistry
- External Organisation(s)
-
SRM University
Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM)
Yogi Vamena University (YVU)
- Type
- Article
- Journal
- International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
- Volume
- 43
- Pages
- 3892-3904
- No. of pages
- 13
- ISSN
- 0360-3199
- Publication date
- 22.02.2018
- Publication status
- Published
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Fuel Technology, Condensed Matter Physics, Energy Engineering and Power Technology
- Sustainable Development Goals
- SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy
- Electronic version(s)
-
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2017.09.048 (Access:
Closed)
