Recent Aspects of Photocatalytic Technologies for Solar Fuels, Self-Cleaning, and Environmental Cleanup

摘要

This survey article provides an argument for the fact that the closely-related photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical approaches are extremely versatile and can be used in numerous ways to both produce fuels and chemicals from sunlight and to carry out various light-induced self-cleaning and environmental purification functions. Dimensionality of titanium dioxide structures is important to take full advantage of this material. Many factors, including size, specific surface area, pore volume, pore structure, crystalline phase, and the exposed surface facets, have important effects on the photocatalytic performance. Two examples are given: environmental purification and photocatalytic CO₂ reduction.