Fabrication of CuO derived reduced graphene oxide photocatalyst for strategic decolorization of congo red from aqueous environment

Abstract

Environmental pollution poses a significant challenge to human health, ecosystems, and the planet's sustainability. Widespread contamination of air, water, and soil from various pollutants requires effective and sustainable solutions to reduce or eliminate pollution and its impacts. In this research work, we designed novel reduced graphene oxide functionalized copper oxide (rGO-CuO) nanocomposite material through simple method. The synthesized novel rGO-CuO nanocomposite material was characterized by using various advance tools such as XRD, SEM and EDX that revealed the information about the crystalline nature, phase purity, morphological features and elemental composition. The characterized techniques confirm the successful synthesis of novel composite material. Furthermore, the synthesized material was exploited for decolorization of CR dye in aqueous environment through optimized different experimental condition such as concentration of NaBH4, sun light effect and catalytic dosage. At minimum catalyst dose of 2.4 mg in only 5 minutes the prepared catalyst exhibited 98.7% degradation of CR dye from aqueous environment. Furthermore, the exceptional reusable profile of catalyst up to 5th cycle highlights the reliability of rGO-CuO photocatalyst. The decolorization performance of rGO-CuO photocatalyst suggests that the prepared catalyst could be an effective aspirant for the degradation of other synthetic dye at commercial level.