An investigation on lead titanate pbTiO3 based p n junctions for energy harvestation and pollution abatement

Abstract

Annual global energy demand and environmental pollution are going to emerge newlineas two main challenges for the development and growth of living society in coming newlinedecades. In this regard, heterogeneous semiconductor photocatalysts starving to capture newlinethe solar radiation under visible regime will be considered as green and sustainable newlinetechnology for the scientific community to tackle these hard-core growing issues. newlineFurther, p-n type heterojunction photocatalysts are rewarded with several advantages newlinesuch as effective charge separation, rapid charge transformation onto catalyst surface, newlineenhancement in charges longevity and finally, partition of incompatible oxidation and newlinereduction reactions in nanospace region that is appealing as an effective and productive newlineapproach to serve the purpose. In covenant with the above novel reason, the present newlineinvestigation includes the varieties of synthetic strategy for the fabrication PbTiO3 based newlinep-n heterojunction photocatalysts and their application towards energy and newlineenvironmental related issues. Specially in the thesis, I have fabricated ferroelectric newlineproperty bearing PbTiO3perovskite based p-n heterojunctions with some low cost newlinesecondary semiconductors (LaCrO3, BiOI, B-rGO and Cu3-xP) to widen the visible light newlineabsorbing range for different photocatalytic performances such as water splitting newlinereaction (H2 evolution) and organic pollutant (phenol and tetracycline) degradation. newlineScientifically, a complete investigation has been made on structural, optical and photoelectrochemical newlinecharacterization to realize the reason for improvement in photoactivities. newlineBasically, photo-activities improvement is mainly due to suitable band newlinestructure, improved light absorption ability, intimate interface interaction and charge newlineanti-recombination process associated with internal electric field across the p-n junction newlineinterface. newlineErection of a resourceful p-n heterojunction is a state-of-the-art tactic to flourish newlinethe charge anti-recombination process at the heterojunction interface and boosting the newlinephotoc