Antiferromagnetically coupled double perovskite as an efficient and robust catalyst for visible light driven water splitting at neutral pH.

Green and sustainable energy production through renewable sources is an enormously exciting field of research. Herein, we report an A-site lanthanum doped oxygen excess ruthenate (predominantly Ru5+-ions) double perovskite system, CaLaScRuO6+δ (CLSR), as an excellent photocatalyst for water splitting. The well characterized polycrystalline compound shows canted antiferromagnetic (AFM) behavior due to the existence of disordered Ru-ions at the B-site. Based on density functional theory + U (Hubbard U) calculations, we have estimated various magnetic exchange interactions and found that the ground state is antiferromagnetic in nature which is in perfect agreement with our experimental results. Detailed analysis of the electronic structure further reveals that the present system belongs to the family of charge transfer semiconductors with an energy gap of ∼0.45 eV. Finally, the material is found to proficiently work for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) via visible-light driven water splitting at neutral pH in an ecofriendly manner.

Evolution of electronic and magnetic properties in four polytypes of BaRuO3: a first-principles study.

Using density functional theory, we explore the evolution of the electronic and magnetic properties of BaRuO3 in four different phases, 9R, 4H, 6H and 3C, obtained by synthesizing under different pressure conditions. The four different phases differ in the differential proportion of hexagonal versus cubic close stacking of the BaO3 layers, leading to important changes in the structure. By computing the electronic and magnetic properties of the four different phases, and the optical properties of 4H and 9R phases, we find that density functional based calculations are to a large extent able to explain the change in properties of the four different polytypes.