Facet oriented crystal growth in titanium dioxide photocatalyst and its nanohybrids with graphene and silver mechanistic insights and environmental applications

Abstract

Photocatalysis is an important field of research unraveling worldwide newlineenergy and environmental catastrophe in an economically sustainable newlineapproach. Many studies have been carried out to understand the fundamental newlineprocess of photocatalysis and to improve the photocatalytic efficiencies newlineof various photocatalytic materials for the control of air, water, and soil newlinepollution. Over the past few decades, significant progress has been newlineachieved in developing novel semiconductor photocatalytic materials, newlineunderstanding their fundamental processes, improving their photocatalytic newlineefficiencies, and finding potential applications. Some of those applications newlineinclude environmental remediation, CO2 photoreduction to, water splitting H2 newlineproduction, bacterial disinfection, and suitable organic syntheses. Hence it is newlineevident that heterogeneous photocatalysts play crucial roles in various newlineprocesses for the sustainability of energy and the environment. Today s newlineresearch recognizes hydrogen as the fuel in near future which can substitute newlinethe exploitation of non-renewable energy resources. Clean and abundant newlinesolar energy to H2 using photocatalytic water splitting is considered as newlinepromising environment benign pathway that can undertake serious energyrelated newlineissues. The need for self-disinfected hygienic surfaces and safe water newlineare also of cardinal importance in this epoch of rapid industrialization and newlineurbanization. All these are well-addressed by semiconductor photocatalysis newlinewhich can utilize solar energy for environmental purification and for newlinethe production of solar fuels.However, efficiency of a semiconductor newlinephotocatalyst depends upon its morphology, crystal structure, exposed facets, newlineband gap, crystal defects, and efficient charge separation and utilization. The newlineseparation of photogenerated exciton pairs, their migration and spatially newlineseparated enrichment at the photocatalyst surface, and optical absorption in the visible region of solar spectrum is often challenging to deploy them for newlinepractical applications newline