Journal of Polytechnic, cilt.23, sa.23, ss.249-255, 2020 (ESCI)
In this study, titanium dioxide/reduced graphene oxide (TiO2/rGO) composites were synthesized by sol-gel method. Reduced graphene oxide was obtained with the aid of chemical reduction of graphene oxide (GO) produced by the Hummers method. TiO2/rGO composites were produced with different rGO content, 0.5, 1, 2, 4 and 6 wt. %, to investigate the effect of rGO addition on structural, morphological and photocatalytical properties. In addition, the pure TiO2 was also produced for comparison with all TiO2/rGO composites. The crystal phase structure, surface morphology, and chemical bond structure of TiO2/rGO composites were characterized using an XRD, SEM, and FTIR. Absorbance values were obtained by UV-Vis spectroscopy to determine the photocatalytic performance. As a result of the investigation of photocatalytic properties, it was observed that the composite containing 4 wt. % of rGO has a photocatalytic degradation efficiency of 87.1%. This study demonstrated that the TiO2/rGO composite obtained by the addition of 4 wt. % of rGO to TiO2 enhanced the photocatalytic performance by 20% compared to pure TiO2.