Structural and photocatalytic properties of GO/ErBO₃ for dye degradation under visible light irradiation

A new rare earth borate photocatalytic material ErBO₃ has been successfully prepared by hydrothermal method. Due to the particularities of f–f electron transition of Er³⁺ ion, ErBO₃ becomes a visible light responsive photocatalytic material. ErBO₃ exhibits certain photodegradation ability to RhB molecules. Then, a series of GO@ErBO₃ composites were prepared by using GO as a co-catalyst. The properties of samples were characterized using XRD, FE-SEM, XPS, FT-IR, Raman, and BET methods. Through detection analysis, it was found that the combination of GO could improve the visible light absorption performance, the specific surface area and the photogenerated carrier separation efficiency of ErBO₃ material, and then the visible light responsive photocatalytic material 0.5 wt%GO@ErBO₃ with excellent performance was obtained. The prepared composite exhibited high degradation performance towards pollutants which affirmed potential the applicability of the proposed degradation system for degrading real industrial effluents.