A facile synthesis of anatase TiO2-Graphene nanocomposites using plasma and heat treatment

Herein, we introduce a facile method for synthesis of anatase TiO2-Graphene nanocomposites using a series of thermal plasma, dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) and heat treatment. The synthesis proceeded in two steps: (1) synthesizing TiC-Graphene nanocomposites from titanium isopropoxide using thermal plasma; (2) converting TiC to anatase TiO2 using DBD plasma and heat treatment. Experiments were conducted under various conditions and the optimized conditions were found to be DBD treatment for 1 min and heat treatment at 643 K for 2 h. The produced TiO2-Graphene nanocomposites consisted of well-dispersed anatase TiO2 nanoparticles below 50 nm and 5–10 layers of graphene nanosheets.