Fabrication and Characterization of Nano Titania-Magnetic Reduced Graphene Oxide with Highly Photocatalytic Degradation of Tartrazine Dye

Abstract

In this paper, magnetic nanocomposites are synthesized by loading reduced graphene oxide (RG) with two components of nanoparticles consisting of titanium dioxide (TiO 2) and magnetite (Fe 3 O 4) with varying amounts. The resulting TiO 2 /magnetite reduced graphene oxide (MRGT) composite demonstrate intrinsic visible light photocatalytic activity, on degradation of tartrazine (TZ) dye from a synthetic aqueous solution. Specifically, it exhibits higher photoactivity than magnetite reduced graphene oxide (MRG) and TiO2 nanoparticles. The photocatalytic degradation of (TZ) by MRGT composites under visible light irradiation was examined by varying the operational parameters such as photocatalyst amounts, organic dye concentrations, and irradiation time. The structural and magnetic features of the prepared composite photocatalysts were investigated by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectra (FT-IR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra (UV-vis/DRS)-, Raman and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). The photocatalytic degradation of TZ dye when using MRG and TiO 2 for 3 h under visible light was 35% and 10 % respectively, Whereas for MRGT it was more than 95%. The higher photocatalytic efficiency of MRGT is due to the existence of reduced graphene oxide and magnetite which enhance the photocatalytic effienecy of the composite in visible light.