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Abstract_Bo WENG
Abating the excessive utilization of fossil fuels is a major challenge in the development of a sustainable society. In this regard, it is urgent to explore clean and green energy resources, such as solar energy, to replace fossil fuels. Among the various options to utilize the abundant solar energy, semiconductor-based photocatalysis, which can directly harvest energy from sunlight and convert it into chemicals and fuels, attracted considerable attention since the pioneering work of Honda and Fujishima in 1972. Especially, photocatalytic fuel generation, such as water splitting, has been regarded as one of the most promising strategies for addressing the growing demand for renewable and clean energy resources to simultaneously alleviate energy and environmental issues.
To date, diverse semiconductor-based photocatalysts have been reported including TiO2, C3N4, CdS, etc., for solar energy conversion. Unfortunately, single semiconductor photocatalysts generally suffer from unsatisfactory solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency due to the unwanted recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs and the lack of surface reaction sites. To address these issues, enormous efforts have been devoted to developing efficient photocatalysts by loading cocatalysts, constructing heterojunctions, and controlling morphology and crystallinity. Among these strategies, coupling semiconductors with noble metal cocatalysts has been claimed to have multiple benefits, including improving light absorption, reducing reaction barriers, increasing the number of reactive sites, inhibiting electron-hole pair recombination, and regulating product selectivity.
In this talk, I will discuss the engineering of metal-based composites for photocatalytic solar-to-fuel conversion, focusing on discussing the modification strategies of metal nanostructures (NSs) that are used to enhance the overall photocatalytic performance, including controlling the morphology, size, crystal phase, defect engineering, alloying with different metals, modulating interfacial interaction, and introducing an external field.