ABSTRACT
Energy production and energy storage are some of the enormous challenges in the 21st century. Development of new and renewable sources of energy may influence a significantly larger fraction of existing energy supply chain in the view of continuous expansion of the energy needs of our rapidly growing population worldwide. As electricity demand escalates with supply, depending largely on fossil fuels along with some hydro power and then nuclear energy source, concerns about greenhouse gas emission and its impact on climate change energy, Research and Development (R&D) into solar cells that efficiently convert the sun’s energy into electricity has generated great interest. In recent years, nanostructured materials have attracted huge attention in the scientific community because of their spectacular physical and chemical properties. Extensive R&D work dedicated to develop noble devices and systems using TiO2 nanomaterials have been most fascinating after observation of the phenomenon of photocatalytic water splitting on TiO2 electrodes. A lot of R&D on TiO2 nanomaterials including nanotubes, nanoparticles, nanorods, nanowires etc. has been widely carried out. Nanostructured TiO2 can be used to provide an environmentally friendly and much cleaner energy due to its unique properties that hold as a semiconductor as well as nanomaterial. This chapter deals with the most favourable synthesis process of nanocrystalline TiO2 (chemical routes/physical routes), key characterization techniques (XRD, UV-Vis, Raman, AFM, SEM, TEM, 270FTIR) and photocatalytic mechanisms are reviewed, energy related applications (Hydrogen for production and generation of Photovoltaics electricity).
