Black titania an emerging photocatalyst: review highlighting the synthesis techniques and photocatalytic activity for hydrogen generation.

The TiO semiconductor photocatalyst is in the limelight of sustainable energy research in recent years because of its beneficial properties. However, its wide band-gap and rapid exciton recombination rate makes it a lame horse, and reduces its photocatalytic efficiency. Recently, researchers have developed facile methods for lowering the band-gap, so that it captures a wide range of solar spectrum, but the efficiency is still way behind the target value.

Prominence of Cu in a plasmonic Cu-Ag alloy decorated SiO@S-doped CN core-shell nanostructured photocatalyst towards enhanced visible light activity.

A series of Cu-Ag bimetal alloys decorated on SiO and the fabrication of few-layer S-doped graphitic carbon nitride (SC) warped over it to form a core-shell nanostructured morphology have been demonstrated and well characterized through various physiochemical techniques. HRTEM data confirmed the formation of a compact nanojunction between the SiO and SC, where Cu-Ag is embedded uniformly with an average particle size of 1.3 nm.

Trioctylphosphine Oxide (TOPO)-Assisted Facile Fabrication of Phosphorus-Incorporated Nanostructured Carbon Nitride Toward Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting with Enhanced Activity.

Designing nanostructured arrays of two-dimensional surfaces and interfaces is a versatile approach to increasing their photoelectrochemical activity. Here, phosphorus (P)-incorporated nanostructured carbon nitride (h-PCN) with an enlarged surface area is fabricated by employing trioctylphosphine oxide (TOPO) as a dopant precursor for visible-light-driven photoelectrochemical water splitting to produce hydrogen. The structural, morphological, and electronic properties of the photocatalyst have been characterized through various physicochemical techniques.

Cu-Ag Bimetal Alloy Decorated SiO@TiO Hybrid Photocatalyst for Enhanced H Evolution and Phenol Oxidation under Visible Light.

With a broader objective to replace visible light driven Pt-based photoelectrochemical/catalytic hydrogen evolution, a series of cost-effective bimetallic nanoalloys of Cu-Ag have been deposited on core-shell nanostructured SiO@TiO through a facile reduction route. The physicochemical properties, i.e.

Serendipitous Assembly of Mixed Phase BiVO on B-Doped g-CN: An Appropriate p-n Heterojunction for Photocatalytic O evolution and Cr(VI) reduction.

Type II p-n heterojunction B-doped g-CN/BiVO moieties have been fabricated by depositing n-type BiVO on the surface of p-type 1 wt % B-doped g-CN for the first time. The materials were characterized by PXRD, XPS, UV-vis DRS, IR, PL, and Raman analysis. The photocatalytic activities of as synthesized samples were studied toward reduction of Cr(VI) and water splitting reaction to generate oxygen.

Surface-Plasmon-Resonance-Induced Photocatalysis by Core-Shell SiO@Ag NCs@AgPO toward Water-Splitting and Phenol Oxidation Reactions.

A series of core-shell-structured SiO@Ag NCs@AgPO photocatalysts with varying percentages of silver nanoclusters (Ag NCs) have been synthesized by using SiO as a core material. The crystal structure, morphology, chemical composition, and photophysical properties of as-synthesized materials have been thoroughly analyzed through powder X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV-vis diffuse-reflectance spectroscopy, and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy techniques. The introduction of Ag NCs has effectively reduced the photogenerated electron-hole recombination rate, as evidenced from PL and Nyquist plots.