Novel nanocomposites for environmental and energy applications

Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Chemistry - Other, grade: 10, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, language: English, abstract: In this work, novel NRGO/BaWO4/g-C3N4 nanocomposites were successfully synthesized by microwave irradiation method and characterized by different techniques like XRD, Raman, SEM, HRTEM, XPS, BET, PL and UV-Visible spectroscopy. The synthesized composite exhibited enhanced efficiency in HER, photodegradation of MB dye and catalytic reduction of 4-NP to 4-AP suggesting that the material can be a very promising multifunctional catalyst. The present approach provides fundamental insights which can be extended in future to other metal tungstate based ternary composites to act as multifunctional catalyst in the field of clean energy and environment.

The abundance of existing major sources of energy such as coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels is limited and they are non-renewable too. With increase in the population, the global energy demand has increased and society is not able to cope with the demand. The quest for renewable clean energy sources has turned our attention towards hydrogen. Hydrogen can be produced by water splitting through electrocatalysis. But most of the materials currently used for electrocatalytic water splitting are noble and expensive. Development of low cost and environmental friendly electrocatalyst is the need of the day now to commercialize hydrogen production. Semiconductor photocatalysis has attracted interest of research community as it can solve both environmental and energy problems. A good photocatalyst should have an extended excitation wavelength, low recombination rate of charge carriers and active sites on the surface to facilitate adsorption and reaction. Several strategies have been developed to achieve the above said properties like doping, coupling with semiconductors and compositing with layered materials to improve the surface area. Despite these efforts commercialization of these materials is yet to be realized. Hence designing of materials with multifaceted catalytical activity such as, high performance towards electrolysis, photodegradation and reduction would help in solving the energy and environmental problems must be thoroughly considered. Such multifunctional catalysts will provide an economic way to serve several applications.