Hydrothermal Synthesis of a Magnesium Vanadate-Functionalized Reduced Graphene Oxide Nanocomposite for an Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production

Abstract

Herein, we reported the fabrication of a magnesium vanadate-reduced graphene oxide (Mg 3 V 2 O 8 -rGO) composite. Further, the structural morphology of the as-prepared Mg 3 V 2 O 8 -rGO composite was studied by scanning electron microscopy. Powder X-ray diffraction and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy techniques were also adopted to check the phase purity and elemental composition of the prepared Mg 3 V 2 O 8 -rGO composite. Mg 3 V 2 O 8 -rGO possesses a band gap of 2.98 eV, which prompted us to explore its photocatalytic activity for hydrogen (H 2 ) evolution reaction. The Mg 3 V 2 O 8 -rGO composite demonstrated the generation of a reasonable amount of H 2 evolution (97.45 μmol g −1 ), which is relatively higher than that of pristine Mg 3 V 2 O 8 (17.45 μmol g −1 ). This may be attributed to the presence of synergism between Mg 3 V 2 O 8 and rGO. In addition, Mg 3 V 2 O 8 -rGO also showed good stability and suggested its potential application for photocatalytic H 2 evolution applications. So far, no report is available on the use of Mg 3 V 2 O 8 -rGO as a photocatalyst for H 2 evolution. We propose the potential role of the Mg 3 V 2 O 8 -rGO composite for photocatalytic H 2 evolution applications.

Efficient Zinc Vanadate Homojunction with Cadmium Nanostructures for Photocatalytic Water Splitting and Hydrogen Evolution

“…34–0378. They reveal a characteristic typical spectrum of the orthorhombic ZnV phase and are consistent with earlier reports [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]. The XRD spectra of CdV exhibited the characteristic peaks at 2θ values of 20.29, 27.30, 27.95, 29.01, 32.52, 36.39, 38.73, 40.51, 42.52, 47.27, 51.59, 54.53, 59.61, 64.68, 68.59, and 72.43 corresponding to Miller indices of (021), (131), (221), (012), (022), (222), (042), (123), (170), (171), and (442) associated with a monoclinic structure simulated with JCPDS No.…”

“…Interestingly, low-band-gap semiconductors effectively break water into hydrogen and oxygen, as most of the semiconductors with large band gaps are UV-active [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Recently, a few research groups have synthesized various vanadate materials and their composites and have employed them in environmental remediation and hydrogen production [25][26][27][28][29]. Expanding the utility of ZnV as a photocatalyst for H 2 production necessitates augmenting its charge transfer pathways to mitigate the charge transfer recombination within the photocatalyst and thereby increasing the overall efficiency [28][29][30].…”