Nanostructured layered double hydroxides based photocatalysts: Insight on synthesis methods, application in water decontamination/splitting and antibacterial activity

Recently, layered double hydroxide (LDH) materials have attracted increasing attention in various environmental applications. They offer the advantages of relatively simple synthesis methods, low fabrication cost, possession of reasonable specific surface area, high catalytic activity, great anion exchange capacity and good thermal stability. Therefore, these materials have been tested in a wide range of applications such as absorbents, catalysts, additives for polymer composites, sensors and supercapacitors. Several researches have been devoted to develop the preparation routes of LDH in order to improve the potentiality of these solids to decontaminate water by photocatalytic process, and enhance their photocatalytic performances for energy storage applications specifically water splitting. This study provides an overview of the researches from recent studies done on different common synthesis methods of LDH, including the co-precipitation, ion-exchange, reconstruction, hydrothermal and sol-gel methods. A few approaches have been investigated for LDH modification such as polyol method, exfoliation/restacking, solvothermal and microwave techniques. In addition, this study aims to gives insight on the recent applications of LDH in heterogeneous photocatalysis process for the degradation of organic pollutants, water splitting for H2 and O2 production and discuss the ability of LDH in the pathogen's inactivation.