Bio-inspired artificial functional photocatalyst: biomimetic enzyme-like TiO 2 /reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite with excellent molecular recognition ability

An enzyme-like TiO 2 /reduced graphene oxide (enzyme-TiO 2 /rGO) nanocomposite with molecular recognition ability was fabricated by biomimicking the geometrical and chemical complementation of the enzyme and substrate. The anatase TiO 2 nanocrystals were densely dispersed on rGO nanosheets with close interfacial contacts. With geometrical and chemical matching of target molecules and memorized cavities, the adsorption capacity of enzyme-TiO 2 /rGO nanocomposites for 4-nitrophenol (4.71 mg g −1 ) is about six times that of control TiO 2 /rGO without the enzyme-like feature (0.79 mg g −1 ), and the enzyme-TiO 2 /rGO shows a relative selectivity coefficient of 7.24. Moreover, enzyme-TiO 2 /rGO exhibits molecular recognitive photocatalytic degradation for a particular contaminant. The results demonstrate that enzyme-substrate recognition provides a convenient and powerful basis on which to biomimic and ...

Wentao Li, Xule Pei, Fang Deng, Xubiao Luo, Fengcong Li and Yong Xiao

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