Title : Designing materials for nanocatalysis
Abstract:
Multifunctional nanostructures as nanocatalysts find the possibility for their applications in water splitting processes for hydrogen generation as a renewable source of green energy. The studies of some multifunctional nanoparticles by chemical synthesis reveal the formation of monophasic nanostructures with fairly uniform distribution of nearly spherical particles, high specific surface area and visible optical band gap. Photocatalytic generation of hydrogen in water splitting process by using as-prepared nanoparticles has also been studied under the visible light irradiations which showed a significant H2 evolution reaction rate. The development of nanostructured catalysts has also been preferred to carry out the heterogeneous catalytic organic transformations because of greater number of surface-active sites for catalytic processes, high catalyst recovery rate, especially their environment friendly nature and their ease of synthesis. Besides the advances in nanocatalysis, certain challenges including not well-defined morphologies due to loss of control over it and loss of catalytic activity during operation need to be addressed. Herein, we discuss some nanocatalysts for certain organic transformation reactions with enhanced activity as well as in water splitting reactions for hydrogen production.
