Preparation and investigation of optical properties and photocatalytic activity of SnO2/GO thin films

In this paper, SnO2-pure and SnO2/GO thin films with different concentrations of graphene oxide (0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 g/ml) were synthesized using spin coating method. The synthesized thin films were used to study the structural, morphology, chemical, optical and photocatalytic degradation of Methyl Orange (MO) under UV light irradiation by X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), Raman spectroscopy, Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy and UV light respectively. The XRD results of graphene oxide show that the peak is very sharp with high intensity, which indicates a very good crystallinity of the GO structure. The band gape value of SnO2/GO thin films increase by increasing of GO concentration. Under UV light irradiation, the photocatalytic activity of synthesized samples was measured using Methyl Orange dye. The obtained results indicate that by adding graphene oxide concentration, the photocatalytic activity of the tin oxide thin film increases.