Luminescent C-Dots: Fabrication, Characterization And Application As Potential Photocatalyst And Fluorescent Sensor

Project Description

Wastewater streams are a serious environmental concern because of the risks of discharging poorly treated effluents directly into the environment by posing a pollution threat to all receiving water bodies, groundwater pollution, soil contamination and resulting loss of biodiversity Various conventional and established techniques prove to be highly inefficient for the complete transformation of harmful compounds as they only end up in producing other secondary waste products. Advanced oxidation processes is the prevailing, cost effective and highly recommendable technique for the exhaustive decomposition of organic contaminants present in wastewater. Semiconductor photocatalysis is one of the most potential AOP methods for the absolute mineralization of harmful organic pollutants into least toxic and simpler molecules. Till now, numerous oxides and sulfides semiconductor nanomaterials have been synthesized, researched and utilized as photocatalysts in this process. However, the wide band gap of these semiconductors restricts its applicability to longer wavelength region. Photocatalysts that are visible light active are immensely important and enviable for the decomposition of toxic organic pollutants. As a new member of emergent fluorescent nanomaterials, C-dots have offered tremendous scope in broad era of applications, such as bioimaging, chemical sensing, biosensing, drug delivery, electrocatalysis, photocatalysis and so on. As of particular interest in the field of photocatalysis, C-dots have been gaining significant attention among scientific community. As it is well known that the photocatalytic mechanism involves the generation of charge carriers such as electrons and holes induced by light. Therefore, an ideal photocatalyst should have both a wide photoabsorption range and a high separation efficiency of the photogenerated charge carriers. Unfortunately, many of the present photocatalytic systems are suffered from low-usage of sunlight and high recombination rate of the photoinduced charge carriers, which seriously limits the overall quantum efficiency for photocatalysis. Therefore, it is necessary to develop effective ways to improve the charge separation efficiency and extend the spectral responsive range. The upconversion photoluminescence of C-dots allows full exploitation of the solar light. The electron-accepting and transporting features of C-dots can direct the flow of photo-generated charge carriers. Therefore, due to the unique photoluminescence behavior and photo-induced electron transfer property, C-dots are considered to be an efficient component in the construction of high-performance photocatalysts. In view of remarkable characteristic properties of C-dots and the drawbacks of photocatalytic system, therefore in this proposed project, attempts will be carried out for the consolidation of C-dots and metal oxides/sulfides semiconductor to design efficient photocatalytic system for the degradation of organic pollutants.