Photoactive nanoarchitectures based on clays incorporating TiO₂and ZnO nanoparticles

Abstract

Thought as raw materials clay minerals are often disregarded in the development of advanced materials. However, clays of natural and synthetic origin constitute excellent platforms for developing nanostructured functional materials for numerous applications. They can be easily assembled to diverse types of nanoparticles provided with magnetic, electronic, photoactive or bioactive properties, allowing to overcome drawbacks of other types of substrates in the design of functional nanoarchitectures. Within this scope, clays can be of special relevance in the production of photoactive materials as they offer an advantageous way for the stabilization and immobilization of diverse metal-oxide nanoparticles. The controlled assembly under mild conditions of titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles with clay minerals to give diverse clay–semiconductor nanoarchitectures are summarized and critically discussed in this review article. The possibility to use clay minerals as starting components showing different morphologies, such as layered, fibrous, or tubular morphologies, to immobilize these types of nanoparticles mainly plays a role in i) the control of their size and size distribution on the solid surface, ii) the mitigation or suppression of the nanoparticle aggregation, and iii) the hierarchical design for selectivity enhancements in the catalytic transformation and for improved overall reaction efficiency. This article tries also to present new steps towards more sophisticated but efficient and highly selective functional nanoarchitectures incorporating photosensitizer elements for tuning the semiconductor–clay photoactivity.

Synthesis of the ZnTiO3/TiO2 Nanocomposite Supported in Ecuadorian Clays for the Adsorption and Photocatalytic Removal of Methylene Blue Dye

“…On the other hand, in agreement with other authors [ 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 ], the clay minerals and clay-derived materials have many diverse applications including catalysis and adsorption, which are based on their unique surface properties. The evidence of this work indicates that raw clays can be valuable supports for materials used for the removal of dyes.…”

Photocatalytic properties of zirconium oxide–zinc oxide nanoparticles synthesised using microwave irradiation

“…Among these features, the photocatalytic properties are of particular interest. This is due to the fact that these kinds of nanomaterials can be used in many fields such as wastewater treatment or coating materials (Ruiz-Hitzky et al 2019).…”

Nanoarchitectonics: bottom-up creation of functional materials and systems

“…Some terrific examples of the application of the nanoarchitectonics concept for engineering applications and the physical sciences include a report by Ruiz-Hitzky et al, where they summarize how photoactive clays incorporating TiO 2 and ZnO nanoparticles exhibit distinct and useful properties [35]. Other examples include a self-assembled MoS 2 -based composite that was developed for energy conversion and storage purposes [36], a silver-nanoparticle/cellulose-nanofiber composite that was applied for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy [37], bionanocomposites with clay nanoarchitectures for electrochemical devices [38], a biomimetic nanofluidic diode with polymeric carbon nitride nanotubes [39], and a unique Janus-micromotor applied as a luminescence sensor for sensitive TNT detection [40].…”