Development and Application of Semiconducting Materials with Controlled Shape and Structure

Abstract

Design, fabrication and characterization of semiconducting materials including metal oxides and sulfides are the most important to use them as functional materials such as catalysts, photocatalysts, electrodes and the others, though there seems to be no general principles to get the materials of the highest performance. This may be because there are so many structural parameters to be optimized while we do not know even how many parameters are there to be considered. In this review, the trial of the author’s research team for the development of functional semiconducting materials focusing on the control of their structure, especially the shape of particulate materials; materials introduced in this paper are bismuth tungstate, titanium(IV) oxide, solid solution of zinc sulfide and silver indium sulfide, and composites of cysteine and medal-metal ions.

Keywords

• semiconducting materials
• hierarchical structure
• photocatalysis
• photoluminescence