Role of fullerene to improve the WO₃ performance for photocatalytic applications and hydrogen evolution

Abstract

Summary Highly efficient and stable fullerene‐WO3 composites were prepared through hydrothermal method for photocatalytic applications and evolution of green hydrogen energy under visible light irradiation. The prepared nanostructures were characterized through scanning electron microscopy, X‐ray diffractometer, energy‐dispersive X‐ray, Brunauer‐Emmett‐Teller, ultraviolet‐visible spectrometer, and photoluminescence spectroscopy to investigate morphological, structural, elemental composition, surface area, and optical properties of prepared samples. The presence of fullerene in WO3 could tune the morphology, crystallographic structure, and optical properties of the as‐prepared nanostructures. The highest photocatalytic activity was achieved at 4% fullerene contents; however, further increase in doping contents may lead to lower photocatalytic performance. The improved photocatalytic performance was attributed to 3 factors, namely, (1) higher surface area, (2) extended visible light region, and (3) inhibited recombination losses.

Entangled spintronic modulated high‐performance Ce 2 O 3 small polaron surface state‐based water splitting cells

“…Water pollution 1,2 is one of the unstoppable environmental pollutions in the world when the population and industries are nearly uncontrollable growing. Many scientists put their efforts 3 into finding out the renewable materials or recyclable energy systems 4‐6 for solving the problems of environmental pollution 7 and the high energy consumption 8,9 . Since pure water and electric power are the products of fuel cells, 10 water splitting cells have been designed to provide hydrogen and oxygen gases by splitting waste water, 9,11,12 which is seen as the best solution for solving the problems of water pollutions and replacing the fossil energy 13 .…”

Surface modification of TiO2 nanosheets with fullerene and zinc-phthalocyanine for enhanced photocatalytic reduction under solar-light irradiation

“…C 60 is an excellent electron acceptor with high electron affinity and relatively small reorganization energy due to its rigid conjugate structure [20,21]. The incorporated C 60 not only serves as a "reservoir" to accept the photogenerated electrons and thus inhibits unfavored charge recombination, but also broadens the light absorption range to a certain degree [22][23][24]. However, the photocatalytic performance of the binary nanocomposites is still far from satisfactory due to the insufficient visible light utilization.…”

Efficient reduction of CO2 to CO by Ag3PO4/TiO2 photocatalyst under ultraviolet and visible light irradiation

“…Moreover, due to the extremely high recombination rate of photo‐excited charges, TiO 2 is ineffective in the utilization of absorbed solar energy, which limits its further practical applications. Thus, developing other semiconductor‐based photocatalysts such as graphene‐based photocatalysts, 5,6 WO 3 ‐based photocatalysts, 7–10 BiVO 4 ‐based photocatalysts, 11 and the modification of crystalline TiO 2 ‐based catalysts has been studied extensively. Several strategies such as loading noble metals (Pt, Pd, Au, or Ag) 12,13 , non‐noble metals, 14,15 and doping nonmetal elements 5 have been investigated to improve the photocatalytic activity of TiO 2 14,16,17 .…”

“…In this case, both the reduction in the recombination rate of photogenerated charges and the expansion of the absorption wavelength range could improve the photocatalytic activity efficiently 23,24 . For example, WO 3 with narrow band gap can combine with TiO 2 to form TiO 2 /WO 3 composite to improve the photocatalytic activity 8,10 …”