Mohammadjavad Jahanshahi

Graphene oxide (GO) based nanomaterials have received a lot of attention in nanotechnology, mainly because of their unique nature, including high surface area, excellent electrical and thermal conductivity, and high optical transmission[1,2]. Graphite carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has also attracted much attention because of its application in photocatalysis. As a possible alternative to TiO2, metal-free g-C3N4 can be operated directly with visible light due to the corresponding band gap of 2.7 eV. However, the photocatalytic properties of g-C3N4 are still limited due to its low surface area and high recombination rate of photoinduced electron-hole pairs. In this study, g-C3N4 modified with Go (g-C3N4/Go) was prepared as a novel nanocomposite with a simple and rapid method, and to be used for the removal and photodegradation of the tetracycline antibiotic (TC). The experimental results showed that g-C3N4/Go has the excellent performance in photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline, up to 81% after 3 hours at an optimized pH of 4.