Silver and zinc oxide decorated on reduced graphene oxide: Simple synthesis of a ternary heterojunction nanocomposite as an effective visible-active photocatalyst

Ternary nanocomposites of Ag-ZnO-rGO were prepared through an in-situ hydrothermal process in presence of 1, 8-diamino-3, 6-dioxaoctan (DDO). It was tried to result homoge-neous fine particles by changing the effective parameters. Then, photocatalytic perfor-mance of the optimized sample was investigated by removing Rhodamine B (RhB) dye as an organic pollutant. Next, the photocatalytic efficiency was optimized by two operational parameters: concentration of dye and pH of solution. On the other sides, the results showed that the silver content amount in the composite can affect the photocatalytic yield. Therefore, ideal efficiency (98.92%) was obtained when the concentration of RhB solution was 10 ppm and pH was adjusted to 11, in the presence of Ag-ZnO-rGO nanocomposite with a silver content of about 5%. According to the findings, DDO can be considered an important agent for the synthesis of Ag-ZnO-rGO nanocomposite which should be used as a photocatalyst.(c) 2022 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.