In liquid laser treated graphene oxide for dye removal

The presence of dyes, pharmaceuticals and many other pollutants in wastewaters is critical due to severe effects on the human beings and on the environment. Here, solutions of graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) were tested as adsorbents for the removal of methylene blue (MB), a cationic dye, from aqueous media. The reduced forms of graphene oxide were obtained after laser irradiation of colloidal suspensions of graphene oxide, obtained by the Hummers and Offeman’s method. We observed that both graphene oxide and its reduced forms are excellent adsorbents towards methylene blue. In particular, rGO showed a higher adsorption capacity than GO, suggesting that a strict control of laser irradiation time permits to obtain rGO with different degrees of reduction and therefore the residual oxygenated functional groups may influence the adsorption behaviour more or less. Characterization of the samples by atomic force microscopy (AFM) showed that produced rGO sheets via laser irradiation exhibited a discontinuous surface where some holes could be detected contributing to an enhancement of the rGO surface area that is a higher adsorption capacity.