Fabrication and characterization of reduced graphene oxide with silver nanoparticles and its utilities for enhancing photodegradation of 2,4 dinitrophenol compound

This study illustrates the usage of as-synthesized rGO with different Ag doping ratios as a new designed nanocomposite for enhancing the photodegradation of 2,4 dinitrophenol in aqueous solution under UV-light irradiation. The Ag@rGO nanocomposite was successfully fabricated by a simple and eco-friendly method without deploying any hazardous agent. The synthesized nanocomposite was characterized by SEM, EDX, TEM and XRD to demonstrate the morphological, size distribution, elemental compositions, phase structure and crystalline nature of as-synthesized nanocomposites. The results showed that, the optimum condition for high removal efficiency of 2,4 DNP wad achieved at pH 4–5, 60 min contact time, 0.4 g/L photocatalyst dose and 50 mg/L 2,4 DNP concentration. Furthermore, Ag@rGO 7% showed high degradation efficiency than other prepared nanocomposites. The adsorption isotherm obeyed both Langmuir and Freundlich models with R 2 almost > 0.99, while it follows the pseudo-second order kinetics model with C e values ranging between 11.44 and 25.84 mg/L and corresponding R 2 > 0.99.