Unveiling Valence State-Dependent Photocatalytic Water Splitting Activity and Photocathodic Behavior in Visible Light-Active Iridium-Doped BaTiO3.

Despite having favorable energetics and tunable optoelectronic properties, utilization of BaTiO3 (BTO) for photocatalytic reactions is limited by its absorption only in the ultraviolet region. To address this challenge, BTO is doped with iridium (Ir) to induce visible light absorption. The visible light-induced photocatalytic H2 generation efficiency is enhanced by 2 orders of magnitude on selective conversion of the Ir valence state from Ir4+ to Ir3+. To understand such intriguing behavior, valence state-dependent changes in the optoelectronic, structural, and surface properties and electronic band structure are comprehensively investigated. The effect of electron occupancy change between Ir4+ (t2g5 eg0) and Ir3+ (t2g6 eg0) and their energetic positions within the band gap is found to significantly influence H2 generation. Besides this, converting Ir4+ to Ir3+ enhanced the photocathodic current and lowered the onset potential. Results aid in designing photocatalysts to efficiently use low-energy photons for enhancing solar H2 production in these emerging BTO-based photocatalysts. Collectively, the observations made in this work highlight the promising application of Ir3+:BTO in z-scheme photocatalysis.

Can magnetotransport properties provide insight into the functional groups in semiconducting MXenes?

Hall scattering factors of Sc2CF2, Sc2CO2 and Sc2C(OH)2 are calculated using Rode's iterative approach by solving the Boltzmann transport equation. This is carried out in conjunction with calculations based on density functional theory. The electrical transport in Sc2CF2, Sc2CO2 and Sc2C(OH)2 is modelled by accounting for both elastic (acoustic and piezoelectric) and inelastic (polar optical phonon) scattering. Polar optical phonon (POP) scattering is the most significant mechanism in these MXenes. We observe that there is a window of carrier concentration where the Hall factor acts dramatically; Sc2CF2 obtains an incredibly high value of 2.49 while Sc2CO2 achieves a very small value of approximately 0.5, and Sc2C(OH)2 achieves the so called ideal value of 1. We propose in this paper that such Hall factor behaviour has significant promise in the field of surface group identification in MXenes, an issue that has long baffled researchers.