Electronic Structure and Energy Application of Layered Carbide Materials

Abstract

This project prepares the silicon carbide and MgZnO-based semiconductor materials for photocatalysis applications. An efficient photocatalytic material is required for proper working to enhance the efficiency of clean energy devices. The efficiency of photocatalysis water-splitting reaction has been limited. However, carbide and zinc oxide-based catalysts are developed to address such issues and discuss the reaction mechanism. Therefore, in this research work, SiC composite is made by hydrothermal method while MgZnO semiconductor materials are made by sol-gel method. To analyze the synthesized samples' structural properties, XRD has been carried out and find out SiC composite and MgZnO materials. RAMAN and UV spectroscopy is used to detect vibrational, rotational, and other states in a molecular system, and materials' optical properties have been studied, respectively. Further, electrochemical characterizations include EIS, Linear sweep voltammetry, and cyclic voltammetry. It has been observed that both materials are actively involved in electrochemical reactions. It can be concluded that the best performance among the two prepared samples is given by the model MgZnO. The reason is that MgZnO behaves like a promising photocatalyst compared to that SiC. Theoretical studies have been performed using Density Functional theory calculations to study the optical parameters, electronic structure, the density of states, and band gap