Graphene/carbon fibers decorated with V-doped titanium oxide: an efficient visible-light driven photocatalyst

The graphene/carbon hybrid nanofibers decorated with vanadium-doped TiO2 nanoparticles (G/CF/V-TiO2) were successfully prepared by electrospinning technique and carbonization. The product was characterized by scanning and transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffractometry, ultraviolet-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. Results showed that the graphene/carbon nanofibers had a continuous fiber structure with uniform distribution of V-TiO2 nanoparticles on their surface. In the photodegradation of methylene blue (MB), G/CF/V-TiO2 showed a significant increase in the reaction rate under visible light. The enhanced photocatalytic activity could be ascribed to the doping of V into TiO2 and the carbon-based photocatalytic system, which resulted in an effective visible light response and a rapid separation of photoinduced electron-hole pairs. The strategy presented here can be adopted for synthesizing highly efficient visible-light-driven photocatalysts