Highly-dispersed Boron-doped Graphene Nanosheets Loaded with TiO2 Nanoparticles for Enhancing CO2 Photoreduction

Abstract

Boron doped graphene nanosheets (B-GR) as a p-type semiconductor, provides much more edges to facilitate the loading of TiO2 nanoparticles (P25). Highly-dispersed P25/B-GR nanosheets with the size of 20-50 nm, are successfully synthesized by the vacuum activation and ultraphonic method. The nanosized morphology can decrease the local density of defects which are induced by the boron substitutional doping, and make the B-GR keeping excellent conductivity and p-type transport property. Ti-O-C bonds are formed during the mixing process, which could efficiently transfer the electrons from TiO2 to B-GR and the holes from B-GR to TiO2. The tunable bandgap of B-GR determines the large potential application of P25/B-GR in the photoreduction of CO2 and other gaseous organic pollutants.