New horizons in photocatalysis: the importance of mesopores for cerium oxide

Abstract

The world faces an imminent energy crisis. The photocatalytic H2 production reaction is a promising process for addressing this issue, obtaining renewable and clean energy. Among the studies in this...

Surface Reconstruction of Co4N Coupled with CeO2 toward Enhanced Alkaline Oxygen Evolution Reaction

“…The Co 2p 3/2 peaks of CeO 2 /Co 3 O 4 at 779.3 and 781 eV correspond to Co 3+ and Co 2+ , respectively, which is similar to those of Co 3 O 4 . Benefiting from the flexible conversion of the oxidation states between Ce 3+ and Ce 4+ , CeO 2 possesses abundant oxygen vacancies in its structure, which leads to the conversion of Ce 4+ to Ce 3+ to provide electron transfer, which could improve the electronic conductivity. − …”

Autonomous self-optimizing defects by refining energy levels through hydrogenation in CeO2–x polymorphism: a walking mobility of oxygen vacancy with enhanced adsorption capabilities and photocatalytic stability

“…30 The fitting parameters were chosen according to the reported literature. 26 Due to the complexity in the Ce 3d XPS spectrum, certain constraints were applied during peak fitting. The spin-orbit split peak pairs (U 000 -V 000 , U 00 -V 00 , U 0 -V 0 , U-V, U 0 -V 0 ), i.e., Ce 3d 5/2 /Ce 3d 3/2 have an area ratio of 1.5.…”

“…Thus, hydrogenation on defective CeO 2Àx develops a novel approach to explore unique functionalities based on controlling the band-edge electronic structure through controlled manipulation of defects to make a novel photocatalyst. Recent work by Thill et al (2020) showed that CeO 2 with and without mesopores exhibits different trends in photocatalytic activity towards H 2 production in the H 2 O splitting reaction. The authors concluded that the presence of a high concentration of O vacancies enhances the photocatalytic activity of nonmesoporous CeO 2 .…”

“…Thus, there exists a synergistic effect between O vacancies and mesoporous CeO 2 in determining the photo-activity of a synthesized catalyst. 26 Therefore, manipulating the oxygen vacancy concentration allows the rational design of a material system and its utilization for industrial applications. In the present work, we synthesized optimized CeO 2Àx in an H 2 environment and its photocatalytic activity under UV and visible light irradiation was established by monitoring the photodegradation of methyl orange (MO) over CeO 2Àx and H-CeO 2Àx catalysts annealed under different environment.…”

Ni/SrTiO3 Nanoparticles for Photodegradation of Methylene Blue

“…Metal oxide nanoparticles such as TiO 2 , , SrTiO 3 , CeO 2 , Cu 2 O, and NiO are typically used in photocatalysis. In particular, SrTiO 3 is a semiconductor with a 3.2 eV band gap that, under light irradiation, can produce the hydroxyl radical (OH • ) in aqueous solutions .…”