A simple and efficient route for the controllable synthesis of dumbbell-shaped BiVO4 hierarchical structures at a large scale with uniform size and shape distributions was demonstrated, where the as-synthesized BiVO4 products were then incorporated with prepared reduced graphene oxide (RGO) sheets to form dumbbell-shaped BiVO4/RGO composites. The obtained composites were well characterized with the aid of various techniques to study their morphological, physical, optical, and photo-chemical properties. Photocatalytic capacities of the pure BiVO4 dumbbells and BiVO4/RGO composites have been evaluated by investigating the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB)-contained wastewater under natural sunlight irradiation, where a noticeable augmentation in the natural-sunlight-driven decolorization efficiency (approx. 26% increase compared with that of pure BiVO4) of RhB could be achieved on the prepared BiVO4/RGO composites under experimentally optimum conditions. The cycle-stabilized photocatalytic performances of the BiVO4/RGO composites have also been probed. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.