Abstract

In recent decades, growing population and industrial development have led to releasing huge amounts of highly toxic chemical pollutants into the environment globally. Several approaches including biological, chemical, physical as well as advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) have been employed to handle the contamination removal from wastewaters for environmental remediation. Among them, AOP based on oxide semiconductors and related compounds (as photocatalysts) is highly promising, especially for degradation of organic pollutants. This method is a "green" technology for complete elimination of contaminants under sunlight irradiation as well as ambient conditions. Semiconductor-based photocatalysis is an efficient, energy-saving, and powerful method. Moreover, this technology is a low-cost, non-toxic and sustainable approach for environmental remediation. In this context, different types of semiconductor photocatalysts such as TiO2, ZnO, and g-C3N4 have been prepared and used to remove organic pollutants from wastewater owing to their unique optical and physicochemical properties. Design of an efficient photocatalyst with the desired band structure, superior charge carriers’ separation, and functionality is of crucial to address the environmental issues and as an alternate means of energy production with the aid of solar light irradiation. For decades, researchers have paid a lot of attention to varied categories of semiconducting photocatalysts for the above stated concerns. As a result, in this talk, a brief summary of other researchers’ reports on solar-driven photocatalysts will be presented. Then, results obtained by my group about the synthesis and evaluation of the photocatalytic activity of some semiconductors will be discussed.