About this Research Topic

Background

Over the past few decades, research on photocatalysis has provided a tremendous impetus on innovations in the area of alternative energy approaches for sustainability. It has also made impacts on environmental remediation. The most attractive feature of photocatalysis is that it could utilize solar energy for its processes aiming at fuel generation and environmental cleaning. Photocatalysis is closely related to organic chemistry in many aspects and it has been substantially benefited by the developments in the field of organic chemistry. A large number of high impact works exploiting the advances in organic chemistry for improved photocatalytic processes have been reported in recent years. Nonetheless, the processes of organic reactions are generally complicated and hard to control. The mechanisms of photocatalysis with organic matters are also complex and hard to analyze.

In general, current research focuses on three different aspects. First, the development of organics-containing, organics-based and organics-derived photocatalysts, which are one of the most promising kinds of photocatalysts in recent days. The introduction of organic functional groups can always influence the physicochemical properties (electronic structures, hydrophilic properties, morphologies, etc) and photocatalytic performance of materials. Second, photocatalytic reaction systems containing organic substances are also important to study. Organic sacrificial agents can change photocatalytic reaction mechanisms and thus influence photocatalytic activities for hydrogen generation. Furthermore, photocatalytic organic contaminant elimination is a typical process in which organic substances interact with organic or inorganic photocatalysts in presence of sunlight. Third, synthesis of high value-added organic products by photocatalytic reactions is a promising research direction. Through photocatalytic organic synthesis, CO2 can be converted into hydrocarbons as fuels, small organics that can be transformed into value-added organics, and suitable monomers for polymerization.

This Research Topic welcomes papers addressing recent progress, opportunities, and challenges in photocatalytic processes involving organic chemistry with a view toward stimulating new breakthroughs to emerge in this field. We aim to explore the fundamental principles and promising applications in organic-based photocatalysis in order to reduce the gaps in knowledge that can lead to better understanding of photocatalysis and organic chemistry. Potential themes include:

• Novel photocatalytic materials containing or derived from organic substances.
• Photocatalytic reaction systems containing organic substances. (Works simply studying or reporting on photocatalytic degradation of organic compounds are excluded)
• Synthesis of high value-added organic products by photocatalytic reactions.
• Other emerging applications of photocatalysis involving organic chemistry.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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