Immobilized rGO/TiO2 Photocatalyst for Decontamination of Water
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In the article authors described synthesis and photocatalytic application of composites contains TiO2 and rGO and GO. I’m glad that I can review so good paper. Materials was well characterized by many methods and authors presented evidences that modified samples show higher photocatalytic activity than pristine TiO2. Manuscript is written very well and is easy to understand. I recommend it to publish without any correction. In my view just the introduction should posses more reference, because 10 articles it’s to low to present this subject quite deep.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
This paper reported the preparation of an immobilized reduced graphene oxide (rGO)/TiO2 composite by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) and found that the presence of rGO has beneficial effects on the photocatalytic degradation of 4-chlorophenol. One minor comment: there are already a number of publications on the photocatalytic reaction of reduced graphene oxide-coupled TiO2 composites, thus some of results in this paper might be compared with those of other reports.
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Reviewer 3 Report
In this report, the authors report on preparation of rGO/TiO2 layers immobilized on stainless-steel substrates and its use for photocatalytic degradation of 4-chlorophenol. Recently, te development of photocatalyst and carbonaceous material composites has been drawing attention, but in my opinion, the quality of the manuscript has not reached the acceptance level. Unfortunately, many of the results and discussions are based on
hypotheses. Therefore, I recommend major revisions which may render the work suitable for publication.
Why do the authors consider that the dispersed TiO2 and rGO have positive and negative charges, respectively? (page2, line 79) If TiO2 and rGO have positive and negative charges, respectively, why do both of them accumulate on the same electrode? The authors emphasize that preparation of the composite film using EPD was optimized in this study. But there is no results and scientific information convincing that the prepared film is optimal. The authors should explain about it in detail. According to the authors' explanation, 4-chlorophenol was selected for their experiments because it is a common water pollutant that exhibits good chemical stability, undergoes negligible photolysis, and possesses relatively low adsorption on the photocatalyst surface. The authors should show grounds to think this way. Why do the authors consider that the presence of rGO cause the downward bending of the TiO2 conduction band? Is it reasonable based on the Fermi levels reported for rGO and TiO2? In general, surface area considerably affects photocatalyticactivity. Could the observed difference in photocatalyticactivity between TiO2 and rGO/TiO2 (Figure 3(a)) be due to a difference in their surface area? In the manuscript, there are many mistakes about Figure numbers. And all figures must be mentioned in the text in consecutive order.
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors addressed the reviewer's comments and the revised manuscript is acceptable to Catalysts.
