Photonic Crystals for Plasmonic Photocatalysis

Abstract

Noble metal (NM)-modified wide-bandgap semiconductors with activity under visible light (Vis) irradiation, due to localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), known as plasmonic photocatalysts, have been intensively studied over the last few years. Despite the novelty of the topic, a large number of reports have already been published, discussing the optimal properties, synthesis methods and mechanism clarification. It has been proposed that both efficient light harvesting and charge carriers’ migration are detrimental for high and stable activity under Vis irradiation. Accordingly, photonic crystals (PCs) with photonic bandgap (PBG) and slow photon effects seem to be highly attractive for efficient use of incident photons. Therefore, the study on PCs-based plasmonic photocatalysts has been conducted, mainly on titania inverse opal (IO) modified with nanoparticles (NPs) of NM. Although, the research is quite new and only several reports have been published, it might be concluded that the matching between LSPR and PBG (especially at red edge) by tuning of NMNPs size and IO-void diameter, respectively, is the most crucial for the photocatalytic activity.

Diatom Biosilica Doped with Palladium(II) Chloride Nanoparticles as New Efficient Photocatalysts for Methyl Orange Degradation

“…These results confirmed a significant role of photonic crystals in photocatalytic processes. The photosensitive photonic crystals are promising for design and production of the synergistic photonic crystals based on plasmonic photocatalysts of plasmonic and photonic nanostructures [72].…”

Novel Structures and Applications of Graphene-Based Semiconductor Photocatalysts: Faceted Particles, Photonic Crystals, Antimicrobial and Magnetic Properties

“…In recent years, the composites of PCs with graphene-based materials (G, GO, rGO) have been explored for numerous applications, such as switch [47], electronic and optoelectronic devices [48][49][50][51], sensors [52,53], surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) [54], and photocatalysis [47,55,56], as exemplary shown in Table 1.…”

“…Controlled engineering that involves the design of IO heterostructures (3D), such as the coupling of conductor, semiconductor [67] and plasmonic nanomaterials [48,73], has gained attention and been considered as an efficient method to enhance the performances of various materials, including graphene-based IO PCs, where graphene acts either as the backbone material of PCs or co-catalyst to improve the conductivity of the overall coupled PC-based materials.…”

Morphology-Governed Performance of Plasmonic Photocatalysts

“…Usually titania inverse opal, prepared from respective opal (e.g., silica or polystyrene (PS) sacrificial template), is used as photonic crystal for support of noble metals, as shown in Figure 20. It has been proposed that the overlapping of photonic bandgap with LSPR of noble metal causes the significant enhancement of the photocatalytic activity (photons are efficiently used by multi-scattering effect), as already comprehensively presented in the review paper on the photonic crystals for plasmonic photocatalysis [123]. Although, efficient light harvesting and high photocatalytic activity have been achieved in some cases [124][125][126], there are various challenges facing the photonic crystal-based plasmonic photocatalysts, including complex synthesis, delicate nature (easy destruction of opal/inverse opal structure), and still unknown key factors of the high photocatalytic performance.…”