Accelerated Perovskite Discovery: Screening New Catalysts for Photocatalytic Methylene Blue Degradation

Abstract

The diversified use of metal oxides within several disciplines underlines their flexibility in various catalytic processes and innovations in material science. Multimetallic oxides, because of tailored functionality, improved stability, and enhanced conductivity, offer a wider range of applications compared to single-metal counterparts. Among them, perovskites stand out, being a class suitable for various applications, including photocatalysis. One among them is the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB), a process increasingly recognized for its importance in environmental remediation and water purification. Herein, we present a simple, economical, and easily adaptable high-throughput experimentation approach to synthesize and evaluate a wide array of citric acid-assisted perovskite compositions for photocatalytic degradation. Our high-throughput approach not only addresses the bottleneck of catalyst preparation but also expands the scope of photocatalysis research by incorporating computational screening of less-explored perovskite compositions. The obtained data will serve as valuable references for the development of next-generation catalysts as we have drawn a correlation between material property and their performance. Moreover, the synthetic methodology, if adopted, permits the synthesis of any kind of metal oxides for applications ranging from homogeneous to heterogeneous catalysis and further into broader domains of materials science.