PhD thesis supervisor: dr. Simonas Ramanavičius (apply for recommendation)
Development of novel catalytic nanomaterials for applications in photoelectrocatalysis
Increasing water pollution driven by industrialization, urbanization, and intensive agricultural activity remains one of the most challenging environmental problems. According to WHO and UNICEF data, about 2.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. One type of water pollution is persistent organic pollutants that are resistant to degradation (e.g., dyes, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and other poorly biodegradable compounds), the removal of which is often insufficient with conventional treatment methods. This situation encourages the development and investigation of new catalytic nanomaterials that enable the efficient application of advanced oxidation processes as well as photocatalysis, electrochemical oxidation, or photoelectrochemical degradation of pollutants. Such methods can not only degrade organic contaminants but also selectively convert them into valuable products (low-molecular-weight organic acids or alcohols) by purposefully controlling the reaction pathway through catalyst structure and electronic properties.
The aim of this dissertation is to fabricate nanomaterials and their composites, using chemical and electrochemical methods, suitable for the removal of organic pollutants and for their selective conversion into useful compounds. The planned investigation seeks to determine the structure-property relationships that enable control over light absorption, charge-carrier transport kinetics, catalytic selectivity, and stability. Unlike many conventional photocatalysts, whose application is limited by insufficient visible-light absorption and rapid recombination of photoinduced charge carriers, significant attention will be devoted to defect engineering and the formation of heterostructures.