Updates on the Roadmap for Photocatalysis

Abstract

Introduction: “Here comes the sun, and I say it’s alright”. The line from the famous and comforting Beatles’ song sounds like a perfect slogan for today’s crusade toward a more sustainable world. A never-tiring memento that, as long as the Sun shines in the sky, there will always be hope to heal a world suffering from an impressive increase in energetic demand. Sunlight brings a gigantic energy pack, and modern scientists are investing a huge amount of time, resources, and intellectual exercise into best exploiting it. Therefore, the fast-growing number of discoveries on photocatalysis comes as no surprise, and quite obviously they are accompanied by a ballistic number of publications (Figure 1). However, is this latter number truly justified or is the chain of events pining for sustainability and clean energy generating an overpopulation of contributions to the topic? Assuming that all such publications always reach a minimum standard of quality and novelty, the question for now must remain unanswered, because research is an unpredictable animal that can feed from any little fruit. However, a different but relevant question could be possibly answered: is it possible to establish a common protocol, set of rules, that makes all these publications useful for moving forward in a harmonized fashion the knowledge on photocatalysis?