Graduation Term

2023

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Department of Chemistry

Committee Chair

Christopher Hamaker

Abstract

Water is an essential natural resource for life; its importance cuts across most of humanity’s needs. However, the growing need for industrialization with the subsequent discharge of effluents has led to an urgent need to remove pollutants found in all bodies of water. These polluted waters are a danger to the Earth’s ecosystems. Therefore, meeting and maintaining the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Number 6, “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” is important. To this end, we synthesized a series of imine-ligated nickel and copper catalysts for use in the photocatalytic remediation of water containing a highly conjugated organic pollutant. The catalysts show good optical energy bandgap values within the semiconductor range, as derived by Tauc’s equation and plots. We used methylene blue (MB) dye for a case study to probe the light-sensitized and catalytic efficiency of the synthesized complexes, with the degradation being monitored via UV-visible spectroscopy. We compared the performance of copper and nickel complexes to reveal the advantage of designing photocatalytic materials with a direct allowed transition over those with an indirect allowed transition. The former gives better performance while the latter shows decreased performance for the photocatalytic degradation of MB. In addition, we replaced the monodentate halide of the copper catalyst with a more nucleophilic hydroxyl to perform an oxidant-free photocatalytic degradation. Going forward, the tunability of the complexes can be utilized to investigate the photon-free degradation of MB.

Access Type

Thesis-Open Access

DOI

https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2023.20231102062048844740.1000000

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