رزگار احمدی

The increasingly serious energy crisis and the environmental contamination have led to an aggressive search for renewable and environmental-friendly alternative energy resources using photocatalysts. (1) Metal - chalcogenide nanomaterials, as compared to their wide bandgap counterparts, are particularly attractive photocatalytic materials for the conversion of solar energy into chemical energy under visible-light irradiation. (2) Cadmium telluride (CdTe) is a widely used semiconductor in thin film solar cell modules. Since cadmium telluride is a direct gap semiconductor with a room temperature energy gap of 1.44 eV , it is considered to be a promising material for low cost thin film photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical cells. (3) A variety of methods have been employed to prepare CdTe thin films on foreign substrates. CdTe can also be deposited electrochemically. Electrodeposition has advantages such as low temperature deposition, low cost of production and high deposit quality. (4) Photocatalytic hydrogen production from water splitting using semiconductor photocatalysts has drawn considerable attention as a promising way of resolving global energy and environmental problems. CdTe demonstrate extremely low photocatalytic activity for hydrogen production under visible light. To solve this problem, many approaches have been proposed to enhance the photocatalytic activity of CdTe particles, including the preparation of quantum-sized CdTe and deposition of noble metals. (5)