Recent advances in semiconductor heterojunctions: a detailed review of the fundamentals of photocatalysis, charge transfer mechanism and materials

Abstract

Photocatalysisowing to its operability under sustainable and green energy conditionsis one of the cardinal branches of the environmental remediation domain. To date, colossal work has been done in the design...

Photocatalytic CO2 reduction to methanol integrated with the oxidative coupling of thiols for S–X (X = S, C) bond formation over an Fe3O4/BiVO4 composite

“…Therefore, based on the band gap positions of the CB and VB of BiVO 4 and Fe 3 O 4 in the composite FBV-2, we confirmed the formation of a Type I heterojunction and charge carriers (electron and hole) flow from BiVO 4 to Fe 3 O 4 . 50 Accordingly, a hypothesised mechanism for this system is illustrated in Scheme 3. At first, under light irradiation, charge separation occurred on the surface of BiVO 4 and electrons from the conduction band (CB) being at higher potential transferred to the CB of Fe 3 O 4 and subsequently used for the reduction of CO 2 to the corresponding CO 2 anion radical.…”

Polymerizable sol–gel synthesis of dark-visible light antibacterial magnetically-recoverable AgBr-loaded iron oxide/alumina nanocomposite

“…The valence band (VB) spectra shown in figure 2(f) shows an enhanced peak intensity in the binding energy ranging from 1.5 to 8 eV, indicating more electron density availability in this region. Further, the formation of heterojunctions is reported to be preferable in minimizing the electron-hole recombination [44]. Thus, the cumulative factors of higher electron density in the VB and the formation of the heterojunction between the two semiconductors could play a favorable role in enhancing the overall photocatalytic performance.…”

Strong thickness dependence in thin film photocatalytic heterojunctions: the ZnO–Bi2O3 case study

“…and even graphitic carbon nanoparticles (g-C 3 N 4 ). 14 Nevertheless, these nanoparticle systems require an extra procedure to recover them from water at the end of the photocatalytic treatment process. For this reason, thin film heterojunctions are an attractive option for study their application in water treatment.…”