Reduced graphene oxide–cuprous oxide composite via facial deposition for photocatalytic dye-degradation

Abstract Cubic Cu 2 O nanoparticles have been successfully synthesized on n -propylamine (PA) intercalated graphene oxide (GO) with uniform distribution followed with a subsequent hydrazine hydrate reduction process to generate Cu 2 O/PA/rGO composite. For comparison, Cu 2 O conjugated reduced graphene oxide (Cu 2 O/rGO) composite was also synthesized using the same method. The as-prepared Cu 2 O/PA/rGO and Cu 2 O/rGO nanocomposites are characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy (IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area analysis, and Electrochemical impedance spectra (EIS) measurements. UV/vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy was employed to estimate band gap energies of cuprous oxide composites. The results show that the intercalation of PA into the layered GO increases the surface area of the composites and provides an efficient strategy to load Cu 2 O due to the large and uniform distribution of active sites for anchoring copper ions. The surface area of the Cu 2 O/PA/rGO (123 m 2 /g) nanocomposite was found to be almost 2.5 times higher than that of Cu 2 O/rGO (55.7 m 2 /g). The as-prepared Cu 2 O/PA/rGO show significant improvement on both adsorption capacity and photocatalytic activity towards organic pigment pollution compared with Cu 2 O/rGO under identical performance conditions.