{"id":18981,"date":"2024-01-05T07:56:35","date_gmt":"2024-01-05T02:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=18981"},"modified":"2025-04-05T14:30:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T09:00:05","slug":"photocatalyst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/photocatalyst\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Photocatalyst?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Photocatalyst<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The term photocatalyst is a combination of\u00a0two words: photo, related to photon, and\u00a0catalyst, which is a\u00a0substance altering the reaction rate in its presence.<\/li>\n<li>Therefore, photocatalysts\u00a0are materials that change the rate of a chemical reaction upon exposure to light. This phenomenon is known as\u00a0photocatalysis.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The illumination of the catalyst\u00a0causes the generation of free charges (electrons and holes)\u00a0that can participate in chemical reactions, altering the reaction rate.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Photocatalysis includes reactions that\u00a0take place by utilizing light and a semiconductor. All the photocatalysts are basically semiconductors.<\/li>\n<li>There are\u00a0various materials that\u00a0show photocatalytic capability, and\u00a0titanium dioxide (TiO2) is said to be the\u00a0most effective.<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0photocatalytic reactions can be\u00a0categorized into two types based on the appearance of the physical state of the reactants.\n<ul>\n<li>Homogeneous photocatalysis: When both the\u00a0semiconductor and reactant are in the same phase,\u00a0i.e. gas, solid, or liquid.<\/li>\n<li>Heterogeneous photocatalysis: When both the semiconductor and reactant are\u00a0in different phases.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>It is valuable for applications like\u00a0air and water purification, self-cleaning surfaces, and even in some aspects of\u00a0solar energy conversion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What are photons?<\/h3>\n<p>Photons are fundamental subatomic particles that carry the electromagnetic force \u2014 or, in simpler terms, they are light particles.he photon is also the &#8220;quantum,&#8221; or fundamental unit, of electromagnetic radiation. Everyone is surrounded by photons: Like all other subatomic particles, photons exhibit wave-particle duality, meaning that sometimes they behave as tiny particles and sometimes they act as waves. Photons are massless, allowing them to travel at the speed of light in a vacuum.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/india\/iiser-bhopal-researchers-develop-material-to-break-down-chemical-warfare-agents-like-mustard-gas\/articleshow\/106551041.cms?from=mdr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>IISER Bhopal Researchers develop material to break down chemical warfare agents like Mustard Gas\u00a0<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photocatalysts are materials that change the rate of a chemical reaction upon exposure to light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":18982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}