MB adsorption by TiO2/GO nanocomposites: A comparison of the synthesis method

Graphene oxide (GO) was synthesized by the Tour method and incorporated into a commercial anatase TiO
2
matrix by photo-sonication and ball-milling methods, respectively. By XRD, Raman, and FT-IR we checked the oxidation of graphite to GO and compared the characteristics of TiO
2
/GO nanocomposites obtained by both methods. Finally, we evaluated the percentage removal by adsorption of Methylene blue (MB). For commercial TiO
2
, results exhibit a maximum removal of ~33.9% after 210 min of exposure. Likewise, after incorporation of GO to TiO
2
, the removal increased to ~40.57% in materials synthesized by the photo-sonication method, while by the ball-milling method the maximum removal percentage was ~65.11%. So that with this work we propose ball-milling as the most suitable method for the fabrication of TiO
2
/GO nanocomposites for application in MB removal by the adsorption mechanism.