About this Research Topic
Extensive consumption of traditional fossil fuels has led to excessive greenhouse gas emissions and resulted in global warming issues all over the world. In recent years, carbon-free fuels like hydrogen and low-carbon fuels like methanol have gained increasing interest due to their ability to act as clean energy carrier to reduce carbon emissions, and therefore developing advanced techniques to produce these clean fuels have garnered significant focus from the governments, academia, and industries. Amongst these techniques, renewable approaches based on semiconductor catalysts such as photocatalysis, electrolysis, and photoelectrocatalysis processes can either directly or indirectly convert solar energy to clean energy carriers, which provide promising solutions to constructing sustainable clean energy supply systems in near future.
However, the commercialization of these renewable techniques is still facing big challenges on achieving highly efficient semiconductor-based catalysts with long-term operation stability and large-scale applicability. To have one step further toward practical application, an in-depth understanding of the fundamental catalytic mechanisms for the catalysts adopted in these renewable energy-related fields should be achieved, and the designing principles for generating novel catalysts with desired catalytic properties should be developed. This Research Topic focuses on collecting high-quality original research articles and review papers reflecting advances in research areas aimed to reduce carbon emissions through renewable strategies. The Research Topic includes, but is not limited to the following themes:
• Photocatalytic/photoelectrocatalytic/electrolytic water splitting;
• Photocatalytic/photoelectrocatalytic/electrolytic CO2 reduction;
• Photocatalytic/photoelectrocatalytic/electrolytic removal of environmental pollutants;
• Novel semiconductive catalytic materials.
However, the commercialization of these renewable techniques is still facing big challenges on achieving highly efficient semiconductor-based catalysts with long-term operation stability and large-scale applicability. To have one step further toward practical application, an in-depth understanding of the fundamental catalytic mechanisms for the catalysts adopted in these renewable energy-related fields should be achieved, and the designing principles for generating novel catalysts with desired catalytic properties should be developed. This Research Topic focuses on collecting high-quality original research articles and review papers reflecting advances in research areas aimed to reduce carbon emissions through renewable strategies. The Research Topic includes, but is not limited to the following themes:
• Photocatalytic/photoelectrocatalytic/electrolytic water splitting;
• Photocatalytic/photoelectrocatalytic/electrolytic CO2 reduction;
• Photocatalytic/photoelectrocatalytic/electrolytic removal of environmental pollutants;
• Novel semiconductive catalytic materials.
Keywords: photocatalysis, electrocatalyst, carbon peaking, water splitting, carbon dioxide reduction, semiconductor
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