Characterization of Photo-catalysts: From Traditional to Advanced Approaches

The article provides an overview of the most relevant characterization results of heterogeneous photo-catalytic materials available in the literature. First, we present a summary of the ex situ utilization of physico-chemical characterization techniques. In the majority of current works, pre and post-reaction samples are subjected to ex situ analysis using a multitechnique approach which attempts to render information about the morphological, structural, and electronic properties of relevance to interpret photoactivity. Details of the effects on physico-chemical observables of the nanostructure and the complex chemical nature (considering mono and multiphase materials with presence of several chemical elements) of typical photo-catalysts will be analyzed. Modern studies however emphasize the use of in situ tools in order to establish activity-structure links. To this end, the first point to pay attention to is to consider carefully the interaction between light and matter at the reaction cell where the characterization is carried out. Operando and spectro-kinetic methodologies will be reviewed as they would render valuable and trusting results and thus will pave the way for the future developments in photocatalysis.