Photo- and Electro-catalytic Materials for Energy Conversion and Pollutant Degradation

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Background

The fast development of modern industry caused energy and environmental issues. For instance, serious environmental pollution, such as organic/inorganic air pollutants, toxic dyes, and heavy metal ions, hinders the sustainable development of human beings. Furthermore, energy consumption can indirectly generate secondary CO2, and the immoderate CO2 emission will aggravate global warming and the frequent occurrence of disaster weather. The direct sequestration of CO2 also leads to a serious waste of carbon resources. Regarding this, clean and sustainable energy technologies are attracting much research interest, aiming at improving energy efficiency and decreasing pollution emissions. Specifically, converting CO2 into clean fuels or other high-value products and hydrogen generation from water are promising ways to reduce carbon emissions. Extensive efforts have been made in developing high-efficiency photo- and electro-catalytic materials for such energy conversion reactions. In consideration of the unsatisfactory catalytic performance of pristine materials, diverse modification strategies, such as nanostructure construction, crystal structure optimization, surface property modification, defect engineering, and heterojunction formation, are employed to improve their performance. Especially, it is widely acknowledged that the catalytic capabilities and durability of the photo- and electro-catalysts mainly depend on their nanostructures. Therefore, designing their nanostructures and understanding the catalytic mechanism is beneficial to gain more efficient and durable catalysts, which provide an insight into constructing new catalysts.

This Research Topic intends to compile recent progress and challenges in the advancement of photo- and electro-catalytic materials for energy conversion, including pollutant degradation, water splitting, heavy metal ions removal, and CO2 reduction to fuels. Various photocatalysts and electrocatalysts, including metals, metal oxides, metal sulfides, nonmetallic oxides, carbonaceous materials, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), etc, are highly welcome in the research of their design, synthesis, theory, nanostructure, and characterization. Furthermore, their composites always play an important role in achieving higher performance in the fields of environmental and energy catalysis.

We invite the submission of Original Research, Review, Mini Review, and Perspective articles on themes including, but not limited to the following research areas:
• Hydrogen production through advanced technologies;
•CO2 capture and utilization, and pollutant degradation through photocatalytic, electrocatalytic, photoelectrocatalytic, and photothermocatalytic approaches;
• Solar-water splitting including heterogeneous and homogeneous photocatalysis;
• New chemical reactions for energy conversion;
• Design, synthesis, and modeling of advanced materials and composites for various photocatalytic and electrocatalytic reactions;
• Mechanistic study of photocatalysis.

Keywords: photocatalysis, electrocatalysis, solar energy conversion, CO<sub>2</sub> capture and utilization, CO<sub>2</sub> reduction, water splitting, pollutant degradation, N<sub>2</sub> fixation

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