Artificial nitrogen fixation over bismuth-based photocatalysts: fundamentals and future perspectives

Abstract

Fundamentals and future perspectives on artificial N2 fixation over bismuth-based photocatalysts have been discussed.

Progress and challenges in photocatalytic ammonia synthesis

“…As mentioned above there are a few reviews summarizing the activity of diverse photocatalysts. 6,13,18,19,22 This critical review will not overlap these reviews, while only concentrate on the efficient strategies to improve i) N2 adsorption and ii) charge separation. Such strategies include surface engineering and interface engineering for NH3 synthesis.…”

“…Photocatalytic reduction of N2 to produce NH3 by utilizing photocatalysts and water, driven by renewable solar energy, has huge perspective, thereby is very significant. [11][12][13][14][15][16][17] Since the seminal work of Schrauzer and Guth, where TiO2 photocatalyst showed the N2 reduction activity with water and N2 in 1977, 17 various semiconductors have been studied for the photocatalytic production of NH3, such as ZnO, Fe2O3, Ga2O3, W18O49, BiOBr, BiOCl, CdS, layered double hydroxides, polymeric carbon nitride and so on. [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] The main challenges for the photocatalytic synthesis of NH3 are the chemical adsorption and activation of N2.…”

“…Complementary to other reviews in which different photocatalysts were summarized, 6,13,18,19,22 this crucial review tries to avoid simply listing a large population of materials and mainly concentrates on the recent advances and understanding in two fast moving areas, i.e. surface engineering and interface engineering, which have been proved to be efficient strategies to improve most photocatalysts' activity for NH3 synthesis rate, including defect engineering, morphology engineering, cocatalysts loading, and junction structure.…”

Accessing Low-Valent Titanium CCC-NHC Complexes: Toward Nitrogen Fixation

“…Improving the efficiency of ANF will lead to huge benefits on a world-wide scale. Multiple approaches ( Figure 1) have been undertaken to achieve this including: improvement of the H-B process conditions by exploring biological-mimics, homogeneous or heterogeneous catalysts designed to operate at milder conditions, semiconductor-based photocatalysis for nitrogen fixation, greener microwave plasma methods to synthesize ammonia and NOx, and hybrid systems between NNF and ANF such as development of synthetic rhizospheres (SRS), which helps intensify the NNF in plants via the development of a synthetic media [1,17,18,[20][21][22][23]. Binding of dinitrogen to a metal center depends on the formation of a stable reduced metal center, which can in turn reduce a dinitrogen molecule.…”

Bandgap engineering via boron and sulphur doped carbon modified anatase TiO2: a visible light stimulated photocatalyst for photo-fixation of N2 and TCH degradation

“…[7][8][9] Among these adopted techniques, photocatalytic pathway of N 2 xation emerges as a sustainable, green and environmentally benign process, which utilizes photon power to reduce N 2 to NH 3 . [10][11][12][13][14] In the current era, a good number of photocatalysts, such as TiO 2 , ZnO, CdS, ZnS, MoS 2 , g-C 3 N 4 , black phosphorus and BiOBr have been examined towards the photocatalytic reduction of dinitrogen. 5,15 Of the reported photocatalysts, TiO 2 exhibits a notable potential towards N 2 reduction because of certain favourable features, including photostability, cost-effectiveness, nontoxicity and suitable band edge positions required for nitrogen reduction.…”