Tuning Catalytic Activity and Selectivity in Photocatalysis on Dielectric Cuprous Oxide Particles

TL;DR

This study explores how dielectric cuprous oxide particles can be tuned for enhanced catalytic activity and selectivity in dye degradation, emphasizing wavelength-dependent effects and advancing photocatalytic applications.

Contribution

It introduces the use of dielectric cuprous oxide particles for tuning photocatalytic activity and selectivity, shifting focus from metal-oxides and plasmonic nanostructures to dielectric materials.

Findings

Wavelength-dependent dye degradation efficiency observed.

Dielectric cuprous oxide particles enable tuning of catalytic activity.

Enhanced selectivity in dye degradation demonstrated.

Abstract

Dye degradation has been for more than forty years in the scientific community. All these studies have primarily focused on breaking various dyes using catalysts driven by either light or heat. Most studies started to focus on metal-oxides after the discovery of water-splitting by TiO2. Among the many catalysts used plasmonic metal nanostructures have been explored significantly in recent times due to their special property called localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPR). However, facing multiple problems of heat losses and instability, people started to focus on dielectric medium-to-high refractive indexed materials for photonic applications. Most of these dielectric materials have been studied from a physics point of view and less from chemistry. In this work, we have focused on how these materials can be used for tuning selectivity through wavelength-dependent studies by performing methylene blue (MB) dye degradation.