Issue 31, 2021

Unraveling the structural and morphological stability of oxygen vacancy engineered leaf-templated CaTiO3 towards photocatalytic H2 evolution and N2 fixation reactions

Abstract

The investigation of the structural and morphological stability of leaf-templated and oxygen vacancy engineered materials is of great importance along with the detailed study of catalytically active sites. In this work, oxygen vacancy engineered leaf-templated CaTiO3 materials have been synthesized by using NaBH4 as a reductant and the formation of oxygen vacancies was confirmed by using different spectroscopic and morphological techniques. Leaf-templated CaTiO3 with the optimum amount of oxygen vacancies showed improved photocatalytic H2 evolution and N2 fixation abilities in comparison to pristine CaTiO3. Density functional theory calculations suggested that the O-vacancies present in the TiO2 plane played a crucial role in enhancing the photocatalytic performance than the O-vacancies present in the CaO plane of CaTiO3. The optimized material showed good structural stability but with a loss in morphological features. It is concluded that the benefits of efficient light absorption by the three-dimensional morphology of leaf-templated semiconductor materials could not be utilized in the studied solid–liquid binary phase reactions. The enhanced photocatalytic performance could solely be attributed to the optimum oxygen vacancy sites, which promote the surface reactions and improve the separation of photogenerated charge carriers. This work is expected to provide a future direction in the smart design of application-oriented three-dimensional photocatalysts and other materials.

Graphical abstract: Unraveling the structural and morphological stability of oxygen vacancy engineered leaf-templated CaTiO3 towards photocatalytic H2 evolution and N2 fixation reactions

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
18 mai 2021
Accepted
15 juil. 2021
First published
02 août 2021

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2021,9, 17006-17018

Unraveling the structural and morphological stability of oxygen vacancy engineered leaf-templated CaTiO3 towards photocatalytic H2 evolution and N2 fixation reactions

A. Kumar, M. Kumar, V. Navakoteswara Rao, M. V. Shankar, S. Bhattacharya and V. Krishnan, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2021, 9, 17006 DOI: 10.1039/D1TA04180K

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements