Rare Earth Doped Luminescent Materials as Photocatalysts for Enhanced Photocatalytic Reactions

The present book chapter focuses on rare earth doped photocatalysis. For this matter, it is essential to cover photocatalysis driven by ultraviolet (UV) and visible light as well. The luminescence and the upconversion phenomena will be discussed in case of several materials as a possibility to utilize low energy photons. Rare earth metals and their fluorides happen to be one of the most suitable upconverting materials because of their energy level setup. These materials can be used for photocatalytic purposes, as they can convert near-infrared (NIR) light to UV/visible light. In order to benefit the NIR light, it is necessary to form composites with these materials and UV or visible-light active photocatalysts, so the upconverted light could be used by them.