Combined theoretical and experimental characterizations of semiconductors for photoelectrocatalytic applications

Photoelectrocatalysis studies have emerged tremendous knowledge and experience, which has led to discovery of a number of active materials. Due to complexity of the processes involved, however, development of suitable semiconductor and catalyst for the photoelectrocatalysis still requires a try-and-error approach as different parameters are coherently varied to determine overall performance. This contribution provides insight into the key optoelectronic properties of the semiconductors, such as absorption coefficient, dielectric constant, effective masses, exciton binding energy, and band positions. The combined assessment from theoretical and experimental points of view is reviewed, which may help thorough understanding of the semiconductors and the way to reliably characterize them, and in turn to develop improved photoelectrocatalytic materials. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.