Graphene controlled solid-state growth of oxygen vacancies riched V2O5 catalyst to highly activate Fenton-like reaction

Fenton-like process based on metal oxide presents one of the most hoping strategies to generate reactive oxygen species to treat refractory pollutants. The introduction of oxygen vacancies (OVs) can enhance the catalytic performance of metal oxides in Fenton-like reaction. In this paper, a one-step all solid-state synthesis strategy is proposed to induce oxygen defects in V2O5, which uses graphene to engineer the crystallization process of V-based crystals. Such approach employs graphene as a solid-catalyst to promote growth of V-based crystals owing to the ions-π interactions between graphene and VCl3. The electron-donor OVs in V2O5@graphene can not only active H2O2 for the •OH generation, but also accelerate the reduction of V5+ and V4+, thereby ensuring defective V2O5@graphene/H2O2 system is 14.3, 28.2, and 17.3 times higher than that of graphene/H2O2, pure V2O5/H2O2 and graphene+V2O5/H2O2 (mechanical mixed system), respectively. Our study provides a novel synthetic strategy to design and prepare OVs-riched transition metal catalysts for developing advanced oxidation technologies toward higher sustainability and practicality.