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11
Tunable Biomass
Transformations by
Means of Photocatalytic
Nanomaterials
Juan Carlos Colmenares Quintero
11.1 INTRODUCTION
The eld of photocatalysis can be traced back a century ago to early observations of
the chalking of titania-based paints and to studies of the darkening of metal oxides in
contact with organic compounds in sunlight. Since the mid-1990s, it has become an
extremely well-researched eld due to the practical interest. The utilization of solar
irradiation to supply energy or to initiate chemical reactions is already an established
idea. If a wide-band gap semiconductor such as titanium dioxide (TiO
2
) is irradiated
with light, ...