Prospective of titania based photocatalyst for environmental reduction reactions

Abstract

In the last two decade photocatalysis is widely studied so as to evolve a green chemical rout to deal with the environmental and energy problem faced by the mankind. Among all the studied photocatalysts anatase TiO2 is most attractive even today though limited to UV light absorption in pure form. However, easy availability, high aqueous stability and nontoxic nature attracted the researchers to go for different possible modifications. Effort has been made by number of researcher to modify titania through metal, nonmetal doping and mixing with other oxides and sulphides to engineer the band gap, band potential and delay the charge separation through Z-scheme and hetero-junction formation so as to achieve the goal of producing stable and highly active photocatalyst for energy and environmental application. In recent past, various strategies have been tried to extend the solar light absorption from visible to NIR range by using appropriate material so as to ultimately promote the solar photocatalytic performance of TiO2 based composites. Keeping these in view, present review will discuss the past and present development in the area of material modification to deal with band gap engineering, heterojunction formation, required porosity, powder catalyst separation and better charge separation with special objective of improved environmental reduction reactions. In addition future prospect of these materials has been discussed in details for new generation researchers. In particular material based on MOFs, two dimensional materials and metal halide perovskites based titania composites are emphasized for future evaluation to address both air and water pollution.