Design of nanostructured materials for photocatalysis and photoelectrochemical applications

Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi-110 016, India Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Forensic Science, Amity School of Applied Sciences, Amity University Haryana, Manesar-122 413, Haryana, India E-mail: ashok@chemistry.iitd.ac.in Manuscript received online 12 November 2020, revised and accepted 27 December 2020 Utilization of abundant sunlight for a more sustainable future of our planet is a key endeavor of the scientific community. One of the major requirements for achieving this is the development of catalysts that are able to utilize light for chemical or Photo(electro)chemical transformations. Broadly these catalysts are composed either of semiconducting materials or materials that exhibit the surface plasmon resonance phenomenon. Nanostructured catalysts based on these materials are an important class of materials as their activity and selectivity can be tailored by variation of characteristics like size, morphology and aspect ratio. Our group has been very active for the last two decades in the development of nano-photocatalysts and nano-photoelectrocatalysts with controlled characteristics. We have utilized these materials for photodegradation of organic pollutants and photoelectrochemical splitting of water for production of clean fuels. This review presents a summary of the work carried out in our laboratory on development of photocatalysts and photoelectrocatalysts. The current state of art and our perspective of these fields is also provided