title: Thickness-dependent photocatalytic performance of graphite oxide for degrading organic pollutants under visible light.
abstract: Photocatalysts use sustainable solar light energy to trigger various catalytic reactions. Metal-free nanomaterials have been suggested as cost-effective and environmentally friendly photocatalysts. In this work, we propose thickness-controlled graphite oxide (GO) as a metal-free photocatalyst, which is produced by exfoliating thick GO particles via stirring and sonication. All GO samples exhibit photocatalytic activity for degrading an organic pollutant, rhodamine B under visible light, and the thickest sample shows the best catalytic performance. UV-vis-NIR diffuse reflectance absorption spectra indicate that thicker GO samples absorb more vis-NIR light than thinner ones. Density-functional theory calculations show that GO has a much smaller band gap than that of single-layer graphene oxide, and thus suggest that the largely-reduced band gap is responsible for this trend of light absorption.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Inha University, Incheon, 402-751, Republic of Korea. sungjinpark@inha.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Junghoon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Oh
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Nanoscience and Technology, KAIST, Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Yun Hee
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Nanoscience and Technology, KAIST, Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Yong-Hyun
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Inha University, Incheon, 402-751, Republic of Korea. sungjinpark@inha.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Sungjin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Park
mesh_terms: D002384:Catalysis; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000737:chemistry*; D006108:Graphite / Q000737:chemistry*; D008027:Light; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission; D009930:Organic Chemicals / Q000737:chemistry*; D010087:Oxides / Q000737:chemistry*; D056951:Photoelectron Spectroscopy
chemical_list: D004785:Environmental Pollutants; D009930:Organic Chemicals; D010087:Oxides; D006108:Graphite