Nano Research & Applications

Role of Nanomaterials and their Applications as Photo-catalyst and Senors: A Review

Lack of environmental sustainability is a vital and growing problem due to the issues: such as climate change, pollution, and disturbances associated with biodiversity. A major cause of these environmental threats is pollutants in the atmosphere. Semiconducting metal oxide nanostructures play an important role in developing smart materials that are well efficient for sensing and simultaneously destroy harmful chemical contaminants from our environment. This review article highlights some recent advances of nano-science in the area of environmental hazardous contaminant detection by sensing followed by the remediation; focused on water remediation especially through photo-catalysis. In addition, the state-ofthe- art research activities involved in importance of metal oxide and their various applications are also discussed. The compilation consists of three main sections vis a vis (a) semiconducting metal oxides and applications, (b) Photocatalysis: fundamentals, processes and mechanism and (c) sensors: processes, types and their respective applications to monitor levels of environmentally important parameters. Also an inclusion of a section on future trends which discusses some of the new approaches being used to improve the selectivity and sensitivity of metal oxide semiconductors. This review concluded the perspectives and outlook on the future developments in the metal oxide nanostructure research area as well as summarizes a comprehensive compilation of the work done in order to address the challenges followed by prevailing achievements till date.

Author(s):

Preeti Singh, Abdullah M. M and Saiqa Ikram

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