Metal-free photocatalysts for various applications in energy conversion and environmental purification
During the past few decades, photocatalysis as a green and sustainable technology has received increasing attention owing to its potential to solve energy and environmental problems. For the purpose of obtaining highly efficient and low-cost photocatalysts, various metal-free photocatalytic material...
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| Published in | Green chemistry : an international journal and green chemistry resource : GC Vol. 19; no. 4; pp. 882 - 899 |
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| Main Authors | , , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
2017
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | During the past few decades, photocatalysis as a green and sustainable technology has received increasing attention owing to its potential to solve energy and environmental problems. For the purpose of obtaining highly efficient and low-cost photocatalysts, various metal-free photocatalytic materials have been designed and developed in recent years for energy conversion and environmental purification because of their unique properties and characteristics. This critical review presents the recent crucial applications and progress in metal-free photocatalysis, including photocatalytic water reduction for H
2
evolution, photocatalytic CO
2
reduction, photoremoval of NO
x
, photodegradation of pollutants and so on. The review also ends with some study highlights and suggestions for future research topics. We hope this review can facilitate deep-level investigation on the subject and provide new opportunities to develop metal-free photocatalytic materials with other important applications in the future.
Recent progress in the development of metal-free photocatalysts for energy and environmental applications is critically reviewed. |
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| Bibliography: | Chunmei Li received her PhD degree under the guidance of Prof. Gang Chen in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. At present, she is a research assistant in the Institute of Green Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Jiangsu University, China. She visited the group of Prof. Rong Xu at Nanyang Technological University as an exchange student during 2015.09-2016.09. Her current research concentrates on the synthesis and performance study of photocatalysts. Wenguang Tu obtained his BS degree in 2010 from Southwest University, China. He obtained his PhD degree under the guidance of Prof. Yong Zhou in ERERC, School of Physics, National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, China. He is a research fellow in Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. His current research involves the synthesis of nanomaterials for photocatalysis. His research interests include solar energy photocatalysis, advanced battery electrode materials and pyroelectric materials. He has published more than 140 peer-reviewed papers to date. Journal of Rare Earth Dr Rong Xu is an Associate Professor at the School of Chemical & Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. She studied Chemical Engineering at the National University of Singapore at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and received her Ph.D. degree in 2004. In the same year she joined NTU as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010. Her research group has been actively involved in areas related to energy and environmental applications including solar fuel generation and water treatment, using nano-engineered particulate semiconductor photocatalysts, molecular complexes and hybrid systems. Her work has been generously funded by various agencies and industry, such as the Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A-Star), Ministry of Education, National Research Foundation, and ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company. Dr You Xu received his PhD degree from Tianjin University in 2014. At present, he is working as a postdoctoral researcher in Nanyang Technological University. His research interests include the development of nanomaterials and their hybrids for electrocatalytic and photocatalytic applications. Prof. Gang Chen received his B.S. and Master's Degree in Harbin Institute of Technology, P.R. China. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Materials Systems from Toyohashi University, Japan. Then he was appointed as a full professor in 1996 in the Department of Chemistry, Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), P.R. China. Currently, he is the director of the Department of Materials Chemistry and serves as an editor on the board of the ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 1463-9262 1463-9270 1463-9270 |
| DOI: | 10.1039/c6gc02856j |