Abstract
Photocatalytic conversion of CO2 to useful products is an alluring approach for acquiring the two-fold benefits of normalizing excess atmospheric CO2 levels and the production of solar chemicals/fuels. Therefore, photocatalytic materials are continuously being developed with enhanced performance in accordance with their respective domains. In recent years, nanostructured photocatalysts such as one dimensional (1-D), two dimensional (2-D) and three dimensional (3-D)/hierarchical have been a subject of great importance because of their explicit advantages over 0-D photocatalysts, including high surface areas, effective charge separation, directional charge transport, and light trapping/scattering effects. Furthermore, the strategy of doping (metals and non-metals), as well as coupling with a secondary material (noble metals, another semiconductor material, graphene, etc.), of nanostructured photocatalysts has resulted in an amplified photocatalytic performance. In the present review article, various titanium dioxide (TiO2)-based nanostructured photocatalysts are briefly overviewed with respect to their application in photocatalytic CO2 conversion to value-added chemicals. This review primarily focuses on the latest developments in TiO2-based nanostructures, specifically 1-D (TiO2 nanotubes, nanorods, nanowires, nanobelts etc.) and 2-D (TiO2 nanosheets, nanolayers), and the reaction conditions and analysis of key parameters and their role in the up-grading and augmentation of photocatalytic performance. Moreover, TiO2-based 3-D and/or hierarchical nanostructures for CO2 conversions are also briefly scrutinized, as they exhibit excellent performance based on the special nanostructure framework, and can be an exemplary photocatalyst architecture demonstrating an admirable performance in the near future.
Highlights
Enormous amounts of CO2 emissions, mainly due to industrialization and burning of fossil fuels, are considered to be a primary source of global warming [1]
Fossil fuel consumption for fulfilling energy demands has led to increased atmospheric CO2 levels, along with depletion of respective resources
Since the invention of water photocatalysis by Fujishima and Honda in 1972 [6], TiO2 photocatalysts have emerged as the premier and champion material with splendid properties including favorable surface area, non-toxicity, abundant availability, high stability, and cost effectiveness [7,8,9]
Summary
Enormous amounts of CO2 emissions, mainly due to industrialization and burning of fossil fuels, are considered to be a primary source of global warming [1]. Despite the eminent benefits of TiO2 nanostructured photocatalysts, to some extent, they possess limitations with respect to the ultra violet region (a small portion of terrestrial solar spectrum) in terms of light absorption due to their wider band gap (~3.0–3.2 eV) To overcome such limitations, similar strategies are commonly adopted as for 0-D nanoparticles, including metal and non-metal doping [18,22,23,24,25], noble metal loading [16,26,27,28,29], graphene derivative coupling [30,31,32,33], and hetero-junctioning TiO2 nanostructures through the coupling of low band gap materials [11,17,34,35,36,37]. This review is focused on the architectural engineering of TiO2-based nanostructured photocatalysts, such that they offer excellent properties with enhanced photocatalytic performance
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