Recent advances on photocatalytic nanomaterials for hydrogen energy evolution in sustainable environment

ABSTRACT

Due to urbanisation and industrialisation, the growing rate of population is in high demand of green and sustainable energy. Fossil fuels seem to be less concern due to its rapid depletion and emission of toxic gases including CO₂ So, the production of cost effective and clean energy has attracted much attention of scientists. Solar fuels such as hydrogen is a cost effective and clean energy source, and it is abundantly present in our environment. It is also an energy charge carrier, and it has the ability to fulfil the increasing demand of energy. Hydrogen-based energy system can build the bridges for future. There are many methods for energy production but photocatalysis is better among all of them. In photocatalysis process, photocatalysts are used. The non-stoichiometric graphene and ceramic-based nanocomposites photocatalysts are found to be efficient and potential for numerous applications in materials science, bioimages, nanomedicine, drug delivery, energy harvesting, pharmaceuticals and biosensors. The unique physio-chemical properties like optical, electrical, mechanical strength and thermal facilitate graphene to render graphene-based nanomaterials suitable for electroanalytical-chemistry, electrochemical-sensors and photocatalysis. This review explains the graphene-based photocatalysts for solar fuel production, their fabrication and recent development in graphene-based photocatalyst. The challenges and potential future perspectives of these multifaceted materials are discussed here as well. This review article boosts up the forth-coming scientists to improve the device performance with interdepending free-standing graphene and additional host material.

KEYWORDS:

• Nanomaterials
• renewable energy
• photocatalyst
• graphene
• hydrogen energy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.