Photocatalytic Materials for Hydrogen Production and Water Purification

Photocatalytic Materials for Hydrogen Production and Water Purification

This community develops semiconductor materials that use light to split water into hydrogen fuel and to break down organic pollutants in water.

The research focuses on designing and synthesizing photocatalysts, primarily titanium dioxide, carbon nitride, and bismuth vanadate, often combined into heterojunctions to improve efficiency. Key applications include the production of hydrogen gas from water and the degradation of organic contaminants such as antibiotics and dyes. The work heavily emphasizes the role of visible light, charge transfer mechanisms, and structural modifications like oxygen vacancies to enhance performance. Recent efforts also explore the reduction of carbon dioxide and the integration of these materials into thin films and photoelectrochemical devices.

The community is most prominent in research involving titanium, where it accounts for 8.9% of all titanium-related papers, and bismuth, where it represents 10.0% of bismuth research. It also contributes significantly to vanadium (4.3%) and cadmium (3.2%) literature.

There are 31,417 papers in this group, published primarily in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, and Chemical Engineering Journal.

Recent work continues to focus on optimizing S-scheme heterojunctions for hydrogen evolution, antibiotic removal, and carbon dioxide reduction, with specific attention to interfacial engineering and charge transfer mechanisms.

Papers behind this description

• Facile microwave-assisted synthesis of Sb2O3-CuO nanocomposites for catalytic degradation of p-nitrophenol — Journal of Molecular Liquids, 2024 — doi:10.1016/j.molliq.2024.125503
• Photocatalytic CO2 reduction — Nature Reviews Methods Primers, 2023 — doi:10.1038/s43586-023-00243-w
• COF/In 2 S 3 S‐Scheme Photocatalyst with Enhanced Light Absorption and H 2 O 2 ‐Production Activity and fs‐TA Investigation — Advanced Materials, 2024 — doi:10.1002/adma.202400288
• Recent advances in semiconductor heterojunctions: a detailed review of the fundamentals of photocatalysis, charge transfer mechanism and materials — RSC Applied Interfaces, 2023 — doi:10.1039/d3lf00126a
• Self-floating Bi4O5Br2/P-doped C3N4/carbon fiber cloth with S-scheme heterostructure for boosted photocatalytic removal of emerging organic contaminants — CHINESE JOURNAL OF CATALYSIS (CHINESE VERSION), 2025 — doi:10.1016/s1872-2067(25)64780-264780-2)
• S-scheme heterojunction in photocatalytic hydrogen production — Journal of Material Science and Technology, 2023 — doi:10.1016/j.jmst.2023.04.049
• Photocatalytic water splitting — Nature Reviews Methods Primers, 2023 — doi:10.1038/s43586-023-00226-x
• A superlattice interface and S-scheme heterojunction for ultrafast charge separation and transfer in photocatalytic H2 evolution — Nature Communications, 2024 — doi:10.1038/s41467-024-53951-6
• Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy Reveals Spatially Resolved Charge‐Transfer Mechanism in CdS/BiOBr S‐scheme Heterojunction Photocatalyst — Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2025 — doi:10.1002/anie.202505456
• Photocatalytic solar hydrogen production from water on a 100-m2 scale — Nature, 2021 — doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03907-3
• The route for commercial photoelectrochemical water splitting: a review of large-area devices and key upscaling challenges — Chemical Society Reviews, 2024 — doi:10.1039/d1cs01069g
• Materials Advances in Photocatalytic Solar Hydrogen Production: Integrating Systems and Economics for a Sustainable Future — Advanced Materials, 2024 — doi:10.1002/adma.202404618
• Floatable S-scheme Bi4O5Br2/C3N4/Carbon Fiber Cloth with Robust Internal Electric Field for Efficient Photocatalytic Antibiotic Decontamination — Advanced Fiber Materials, 2025 — doi:10.1007/s42765-025-00601-1
• Interfacial engineering of Cd0.5Zn0.5S/BiOBr S-scheme heterojunction with oxygen vacancies for effective photocatalytic antibiotic removal — Acta Physico-Chimica Sinica, 2025 — doi:10.1016/j.actphy.2025.100190
• Plasmon-Induced Ultrafast Interfacial Charge Transfer for Enhanced Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution — Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2025 — doi:10.1021/jacs.5c11154
• Photoelectrocatalytic hydrogen evolution combined with organic waste water treatment by red mud derived catalysts — Journal of Power Sources, 2025 — doi:10.1016/j.jpowsour.2025.238600
• In Situ Soft X‐Ray Absorption Spectroscopy Investigation on Charge Transfer Mechanism in COF/CdS S‐Scheme Photocatalyst — Advanced Materials, 2025 — doi:10.1002/adma.202514576
• Construction of S-scheme heterojunction with interfacial chemical bonds for enhanced photocatalytic CO2 reduction — Applied Surface Science, 2025 — doi:10.1016/j.apsusc.2025.165001