Description
Enhancing the catalytic activity of photocatalysts is of growing interest in the endeavor to transition towards greener energy resources with a constantly growing demand. In contrast to photovoltaics, photocatalysts utilize sunlight directly for chemical reactions. This can provide the possibility to decompose contaminants in waste water with sunlight irradiation and at the same time generate valuble chemical reagents and so-called solar fuels, like hydrogen. However, in heterogeneous catalysis a huge limiting factor and focus of research is, that such catalysts generally show low surface areas and thus low available reactive sites. In this work we used a single source precursor method using xanthates for the synthesis of the established photocatalyst zinc indium sulfide. The xanthate method, which offers solution processible sulfide films, enables us to combine the inherently formed micropores by the thermal conversion of the xanthate with an external templating method like microsphere lithography. This allowed us to combine macropores around 300 nm from the exernal template with micropores around 1.6 nm from the xanthates to successfully create hierarchically porous zinc indium sulfide thin films.Moreover, we performed preliminary photocatalytic dye degradation tests with the organic dye Rhodamine B. With these tests we confirmed a 3.3-fold increase in specific catalytic activity of the hierarchically porous thin films compared to the bulk films. These results suggest promise to optimize photocatalytic activity via multiscale porosity.
| Period | 8 Jul 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | PMWS Summer School on Catalysis |
| Event type | Other |
| Location | Graz, AustriaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | Local |