Sustainable hydrogen production by plasmonic thermophotocatalysis

Oxide-based composites: applications in thermo-photocatalysis

“…This contribution is dedicated to the analysis of the above mentioned composite catalysts, focusing on on the study of the role of the oxide components. It would complement previous works centered in analyzing metal components of thermo-photo catalysts 11 . Before considering the active systems accomplishing such task, we can have a simple picture of the handling of thermal and light energy by plasmonic, defect-related and (nano)heat oxide-based systems.…”

“…The inclusion of such materials in composite catalysts can trigger a strong thermal gradient across the solid. Within the landscape of this contribution, mainly low-energy gap oxides (having band gap energy fitting with IR excitation) have been used as (nano)heaters but other possibilities will be here briefly discussed 7,8,9,10,11 .…”

“…Plasmonic oxides utilized in the field are essentially those with relation with WO3-x, MoO3-x and Cu2Ox systems 11,12 . These oxide systems can possess metallic-band type electronic structure originated by partial filling of the (stoichiometric oxide) valence/conduction band by downward (Cu) / upward (W, Mo) shift of the Fermi edge.…”

M/TiO2 (M = Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn) catalysts for photocatalytic hydrogen production under UV and visible light irradiation

“…It has been reported in the literature that the hydrogen photoproduction by employing copper-based systems is strongly affected by the complex structural, morphological, and chemical features of copper species 26 and that the occurrence of highly dispersed Cu + /Cu 2+ species is directly related to the higher performance of a system for the H 2 production reaction. 51,52 In our work it seems that, in the sample 2 wt% Cu/TiO 2 both the optical properties and the structural-chemical ones contribute to enhance the photocatalytic activity. This copper loading, besides displaying a much higher fluorescence band than 9 wt% Cu/TiO 2 sample, is also advantageous for the investigated reaction since an excessive coverage of titania surface by the active phase has detrimental effects on the ability of TiO 2 to photogenerate hydrogen.…”

Numerical Modelling of Formation of Highly Ordered Structured Micro- and Nanoparticles – A Review

“…Well-controlled synthesis of nanomaterials and nanoscale characterization enables us to unambiguously correlate the structural properties with the physical, chemical and biological properties of nanomaterials, which form the core of nanoscience research. Excellent examples of the use of advanced particle engineering to design the structure and properties of catalysts are described in the review paper (Czelej et al, 2021). An essential requirement for nanomaterial synthesis is the uniformity of the final product in size, shape and chemical composition.…”