All-solid-state Z-scheme photocatalytic systems.

Abstract

The current rapid industrial development causes the serious energy and environmental crises. Photocatalyts provide a potential strategy to solve these problems because these materials not only can directly convert solar energy into usable or storable energy resources but also can decompose organic pollutants under solar-light irradiation. However, the aforementioned applications require photocatalysts with a wide absorption range, long-term stability, high charge-separation efficiency and strong redox ability. Unfortunately, it is often difficult for a single-component photocatalyst to simultaneously fulfill all these requirements. The artificial heterogeneous Z-scheme photocatalytic systems, mimicking the natural photosynthesis process, overcome the drawbacks of single-component photocatalysts and satisfy those aforementioned requirements. Such multi-task systems have been extensively investigated in the past decade. Especially, the all-solid-state Z-scheme photocatalytic systems without redox pair have been widely used in the water splitting, solar cells, degradation of pollutants and CO2 conversion, which have a huge potential to solve the current energy and environmental crises facing the modern industrial development. Thus, this review gives a concise overview of the all-solid-state Z-scheme photocatalytic systems, including their composition, construction, optimization and applications.