Recent advances in floating TiO₂-based photocatalysts for environmental application

The light-harvesting and recycle of powder photocatalyst in suspended system are bottlenecks for high-efficient solar photocatalysis. Floating photocatalyst are highly sought-after and good candidates for practical environmental application due to the satisfaction with above requirements simultaneously. Over the past decades, floating TiO₂-based photocatalysts have attracted much attention, which makes great progress and it is significant to review the recent advances. This review highlights the rational design and fabrication strategy for floating photocatalyst immobilized on various lightweight substrates (e.g. perlite, vermiculite, glass microbead, polymer, cork, expanded graphite) or self-floating photocatalyst. The special characteristics and deep understanding of photocatalytic mechanism for floating photocatalyst are summarized and discussed thoroughly. Moreover, the future research and challenge will focus on designing and optimizing the high-efficient broadband response floating photocatalyst to improve solar energy utilization. From an application viewpoint, floating photocatalyst have real practical applications in natural environment and are worthy of great attention.