Plasmonic photocatalysts as emerging multifunctional nanomaterials for energy and environmental applications

Plasmonic photocatalysts are emerging as multifunctional nanomaterials for multidisciplinary applications in various fields of energy, environment and biomedical. Plasmonic photocatalysts are composed of noble metals and wide band gap semiconductors which provide ample opportunities to tune their opto-electronic and photocatalytic properties promising for such applications. Particularly, noble metal and semiconductor nanomaterials show unique surface plasmon resonance and photocatalytic properties respectively. The combination of such characteristics make plamsonic photocatalysts very promising for visible light activities with enhanced functionalities as compared to their own. In recent years, these nanomaterials have shown great potential as multifunctional/multidisciplinary nanomaterials due to their tunable characteristics and ease of fabrication strategies. This mini review covers such multifunctional photocatalytic activities of ZnO and noble metal (Ag, Au etc.) nanomaterials based plasmonic photocatalysts in the field of energy and environment. Recent progress in the tailoring their properties for enhanced functioning and mechanism of their action have been discussed.

Automated summary

Plasmonic photocatalysts are multifunctional nanomaterials composed of noble metals and wide band gap semiconductors. They show promising opto-electronic and photocatalytic properties due to the unique surface plasmon resonance and photocatalytic properties of noble metals and semiconductors, respectively. Recently, they have shown great potential as multifunctional/multidisciplinary nanomaterials and have been extensively studied for their enhanced functionalities in the fields of energy and environment.