Hydrothermal Synthesis of a Magnesium Vanadate-Functionalized Reduced Graphene Oxide Nanocomposite for an Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production

Herein, we reported the fabrication of a magnesium vanadate-reduced graphene oxide (Mg₃V₂O₈-rGO) composite. Further, the structural morphology of the as-prepared Mg₃V₂O₈-rGO composite was studied by scanning electron microscopy. Powder X-ray diffraction and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy techniques were also adopted to check the phase purity and elemental composition of the prepared Mg₃V₂O₈-rGO composite. Mg₃V₂O₈-rGO possesses a band gap of 2.98 eV, which prompted us to explore its photocatalytic activity for hydrogen (H₂) evolution reaction. The Mg₃V₂O₈-rGO composite demonstrated the generation of a reasonable amount of H₂ evolution (97.45 μmol g^-1), which is relatively higher than that of pristine Mg₃V₂O₈ (17.45 μmol g^-1). This may be attributed to the presence of synergism between Mg₃V₂O₈ and rGO. In addition, Mg₃V₂O₈-rGO also showed good stability and suggested its potential application for photocatalytic H₂ evolution applications. So far, no report is available on the use of Mg₃V₂O₈-rGO as a photocatalyst for H₂ evolution. We propose the potential role of the Mg₃V₂O₈-rGO composite for photocatalytic H₂ evolution applications.