Dear Lea Bongat,

The bandgap of rGO can vary from ~1.00 to 1.69 eV depending on the degree of reduction. Hence it will be tricky to meet the energy of photo-catalytic water-splitting. Thus, rGO are usually used in addition to other photo-catalyst as nano-composites for efficient photo-catalytic water-splitting.

Dear Lea Bongat , despite the fact that rGO is a verstile and functional material for development of water remediation strategies, it suffers from some relative imprefections which have hampered its scalable application. First of all, rGO has low hydrophilicity and dispersibility compared to GO and other nanomaterials used in water treatment. The second issue is the difficulty of separation from water after treatment. That's why, in most cases the scientists prefer to either assemble the rGO nanosheets to fabricate different 3D superstructures like membranes, sponges, fabrics or to magnetize them using magnetite nanoparticles to facilitate the separation process. The third problem is the scalable production of rGO which is not straightforward and is somehow dangerous. Hence, scientists have proposed multifarious solutions for obviating these drawbacks in recent years. However, these issues are still of great importance and various groups are conducting research on these subjects.

Best,

Agree with Mahdi Ghamsari

1-GO mainly contains different functional groups that reduce its conductivity compared to RGO. On the other hand in RGO percentage of oxygen-containing functional groups reduced and the percentage of SP2 carbon atoms increases which increase its conductivity which makes is less electron conducting (high ion conduction)therefore GO is good to be used as substrate for catalysis owing to rich functionality where chemical moieties over the surface of GO can be chemically altered while rGO are more suited for applications like supercapacitors and batteries due to its better electron transport property.

2-GO structures show hydrophilic behavior while rGO shows hydrophobic behavior due to the loss of oxygen containing compounds. The differences between hydrophilic/hydrophobic behavior also induce a difference in the dispersibility of GO and rGO. Graphene oxide shows high dispersibility in aqueous media while rGO shows significantly lower dispersibility.