Chemical and electronic modifications and kinetic investigations on photocatalysts with defect-pyrochlore-structe for water splitting

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Roland Marschall
• Subject Area: Physical Chemistry of Solids and Surfaces, Material Characterisation
• Term: from 2013 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 230507827

A thorough kinetic study on all materials prepared in the Emmy-Noether project so far will be continued, to identify the reaction kinetics of the resulting photocatalysts, and to achieve a correlation between material, morphology, crystallinity, and activity. Based on the previous results of the Emmy-Noether-project, additionally an optimized mesoporous photocatalyst with tailored mesopores and pore walls with defect-pyrochlore structure shall be prepared, which shall exceed the activity in hydrogen production of the previously in this project prepared mesoporous and nanoparticulate defect-pyrochlores significantly. This research idea was not part of the initially submitted project, and presents a logical development based on the knowledge gained in the Emmy-Noether project. Therefore, nanoparticles of CsTaWO6 will be prepared by hydrothermal synthesis, and subsequently used as nanoparticulate building blocks in a template-based synthesis to prepare mesoporous CsTaWO6. By choosing the desired nanoparticle size, the optimum wall thickness for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution can be set. This was not possible in previous work on soft- and hard-templating of CsTaWO6. By means of suitable templates, the pore geometry shall also be tailored.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups
• International Connection: Austria
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Dominik Eder