3D structured materials and devices for artificial photosynthesis

Abstract

Artificial photosynthesis is an effective way to convert solar energy into fuels, which is of great significance to energy production and reduction of atmospheric CO2 content. In recent years, 3D structured artificial photosynthetic system has made great progress as an effective design strategy. This review first highlights several typical mechanisms for improved artificial photosynthesis with 3D structures: improved light harvesting, mass transfer and charge separation. Then, we summarize typical examples of 3D structured artificial photosynthetic systems, including bioinspired structures, photonic crystals (PC), designed photonic structures (PC coupling structure, plasmon resonance structure, optical resonance structure, metamaterials), 3D-printed systems, nanowire integrated systems and hierarchical 3D structures. Finally, we discuss the problems and challenges to the application and development of 3D artificial photosynthetic system and the possible trends of future development. We hope this review can inspire more progress in the field of artificial photosynthesis.

Improving the Photocatalytic Hydrogen Generation Using Nonaggregated Zinc Phthalocyanines

“…9, 16,19−22 The system of AP arises from catalysis, light harvesting, and photoinduced multistep electron transfer to convert solar energy to chemical energy on heterogeneous photocatalysts. 4,10,15,16,22,23 The dye-sensitized PC system is one of the most attractive ways among AP systems because of its relatively low cost and basic fabrication, which have been explored for clean and efficient solar fuel production decomposition of water to H 2 and O 2 . In this solar energy conversion system, after the absorption of sunlight by dye, the excited electrons move into the semiconductor conduction band.…”

“…Global-scale attitudes such as widespread deforestation, the burning of fossil fuels, and pollution arising from industrial production result in massive CO 2 emissions, which contribute to the greenhouse effect caused by the world’s growing population due to significant absorption of the infrared fraction of solar radiation. − Solar energy is a particularly appealing candidate among renewable and sustainable alternative energy sources since the solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface has the potential to meet future energy demands. Therefore, researchers should focus on using visible light and devising an efficient system that converts light energy into chemical energy. − In spite of the fact that photovoltaic cells can directly convert solar energy into electricity, photocatalytic (PC) processes that work under visible light irradiation are a much more efficient application to harness solar energy, which can harvest and accumulate solar energy in the form of molecular bonds. , Sunlight-based hydrogen (H 2 ) production, which utilizes visible light to split water into molecular oxygen (O 2 ) and H 2 , has garnered considerable interest because it has the potential to store significant amounts of energy, avoid reliance on fossil fuels, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. , Therefore, H 2 generation via solar-driven PC water splitting has been considered a future energy carrier regarding the growing environmental apprehension and the increasing energy demands because it provides environmentally friendly, clean, and low-cost production of H 2 by using visible light. − Herewith, metal oxide semiconductors have attracted considerable attention to the photoelectrochemical (PEC) and PC hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) due to the efficient, environmentally friendly, and low cost, and the H 2 production occurs in the presence of semiconductor photocatalysts via these methods. , TiO 2 is a well-known photocatalyst for HER because of its high stability against photocorrosion and suitable energy band structure for electron transport, which was used for the first time under UV light illumination by Fujishima and Honda in 1972.…”

“…TiO 2 photoelectrodes have been successfully investigated in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), provided by energy conversion of light at longer wavelengths. DSSC is one of the heterogeneous artificial photosynthesis (AP) devices by mimicking natural photosynthesis, in which dye molecules absorb the sunlight to drive an electrochemical reaction. ,,− The system of AP arises from catalysis, light harvesting, and photoinduced multistep electron transfer to convert solar energy to chemical energy on heterogeneous photocatalysts. ,,,,, The dye-sensitized PC system is one of the most attractive ways among AP systems because of its relatively low cost and basic fabrication, which have been explored for clean and efficient solar fuel production decomposition of water to H 2 and O 2 . In this solar energy conversion system, after the absorption of sunlight by dye, the excited electrons move into the semiconductor conduction band.…”

Photonic approach in stacked slabs having periodic holes for enhancing photocatalytic activities

“…Light manipulation can improve efficiencies of photoelectrochemical devices, towards CO 2 reduction and fossil fuel-free societies. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] In particular, the photonic approach through the use of dielectric materials allows control and connement of an incident light on desired spots in photoelectrochemical devices with negligible intrinsic loss. Photonic crystals are widely-used periodic structures consisting of alternative dielectric materials having different permittivities.…”

Effect of trampoline sputtering on surface morphology and coatings properties

“…It should be noted that similar hierarchical structures are widely observed and studied by biophysics [32][33][34], soft matter physics and physical chemistry [35][36][37], modern material science, solid state physics, surface science, and optics [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49], the condensed matter research and technology being also partially bioinspired. In particular, the formation of nanoscale structures may lead to the enhancement of the adhesion between the films and substrates [23,50,51].…”