Formation of snowflake-like CdS/reduced graphene oxide composite for efficient photocatalytic organic dye degradation

Photocatalytic efficiency of CdS can be improved significantly by controlling the morphology and recombining with other semiconductor materials. In this work, a novel snowflake-like CdS/reduced graphene oxide (rGO) composite was prepared by a simple hydrothermal process using graphene oxide and CdS as raw materials and l-aspartic acid as template. The structure of the composites were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction. Through a basic analysis, a simple synthesis mechanism of snowflake-like CdS is proposed, and transient photocurrent technology demonstrate that the photocurrent of snowflake-like CdS/rGO is greatly improved. Compared with pure CdS, snowflake-like CdS/rGO exhibits efficient organic dye adsorption and degradation under visible light irradiation, resulting from the involving of rGO sheet as chainmail, which facilitates the charge separation, suppresses the recombination of electron–hole pairs, and improves light conversion efficiency of catalysts.