Photocatalytic Materials Obtained from E-Waste Recycling: Review, Techniques, Critique, and Update

Abstract

Waste-derived materials obtained from the recovery and recycling of electronic waste (e-waste) such as batteries and printed circuit boards have attracted enormous attention from aca-demia and industry in recent years, especially due to their eco-friendly nature and the massive in-crement in e-waste due to technological development. Several investigations in the literature have covered the advances achieved so far. Meanwhile, photocatalytic applications are especially of in-terest since they maintain mutual benefits and can be used for H2 production from solar water splitting based on semiconductor processing as a proper environmentally friendly technique for solar energy conversion. In addition, they can be utilized to degrade a variety of organic and non-organic contaminations. Nonetheless, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has not been any compre-hensive review that has specifically been focused on e-waste-derived photocatalytic materials. In this regard, the present work is dedicated to thoroughly discussing the related mechanisms, strate-gies, and methods, as well as the various possible photocatalysts synthesized from e-wastes with some critiques in this field. This brief overview can introduce modern technologies and promising possibilities for e-waste valorization, photocatalytic processes, and new photocatalytic degradation methods of eco-friendly nature. This paper discusses various e-waste-obtained photocatalytic ma-terials, synthesis procedures, and applications, as well as several types of e-waste, derived materials such as TiO2, ZnO, indium tin oxide, and a variety of sulfide-and ferrite-based photocatalytic ma-terials.