Challenges, novel applications, and future prospects of chalcogenides and chalcogenide-based nanomaterials for photocatalysis

Nanomaterials are composed of several atoms or molecules, which may be of various sizes and morphologies. Manmade nanomaterials are specially produced to take advantage of the unique properties of nanoscale. There are many metal chalcogenides with different structures and compositions such as CdSe, InAs, CdS, GaN, InGeAs, CdTe, PbS, PbSe, ZnS, Na2S, CaTe, Ti2S, and Cu2Se. The diversity of metal chalcogenides is related to the orbit of transition metals. In this chapter, new studies using chalcogenide compounds as photocatalysts were explained under the subtopics of metal chalcogenides and their properties, semiconductive nanostructures, nanomaterial production technique, chemical synthesis methods, and metal chalcogenides as photocatalysts. Novel applications of metal chalcogenide-based materials like water splitters, organic pollutant degraders, self-cleaning agents chalcogenide glasses and thermoelectric materials are explained in detail under the relevant headings. Future prospects of chalcogenides are also evaluated from a different perspective.