Titanium Carbide (TiC) MXene‐Based Titanium Dioxide Composites for Energy and Environment Applications

Abstract

Recently, MXene has attracted considerable attention in all photocatalytic applications owing to its good electrical properties, large specific surface area, exposed active sites, and tunable surface termination groups. Both MXene-derived and -based nanomaterials deliver motivation for designing novel composites with optimum photocatalytic activity and long-term stability. Among all semiconductor materials, TiO 2 is the most studied photocatalyst for simulated-solar light photocatalysis owing to its low-cost, abundancy, non-toxicity, and corrosion resistance. Nevertheless, significant drawbacks are still associated with the present TiO 2 photocatalytic systems: this includes the high recombination rate of photogenerated charges, the wide bandgap, and the poor absorption of visible light. In this perspective, MXene has been extensively investigated for the modification of TiO 2 toward enhanced photocatalytic performance. Therefore, this chapter aims to explain the properties of both MXene and TiO 2 with the role of MXene in enhancing the photocatalytic performance of TiO 2 photocatalysts. Moreover, the recent developments of MXene/TiO 2 nanocomposites for environmental remediation and energy production applications such as photocatalytic CO 2 reduction, photocatalytic H 2 production, and pollutant photodegradation are summarized and deeply discussed in this chapter.