Photocatalysis And Solar Fuels beyond Nominal Performance: Mechanisms, Uncertainty, and Deployment

Abstract

This review examines a shared methodological problem in photocatalysis and solar fuels: how evidence from a beta-FeOOH photo-Fenton platform that couples hydrogen evolution with pollutant degradation can be placed in analytical dialogue with dual-function phosphorus doping and cocatalyst engineering to improve charge use in photocatalytic hydrogen generation without erasing differences in scale, assumptions, or intended use. Two target papers are triangulated against 12 locally validated publications. The comparison follows charge separation, active-site chemistry, reaction selectivity, materials stability, reactor integration and deliberately separates mechanistic interpretation from performance ranking, because the latter can conceal incompatible experimental or operational conditions. The synthesis shows that charge separation cannot be interpreted independently of active-site chemistry, while reaction selectivity determines whether an apparent improvement remains meaningful outside the original setting. The strongest claims are therefore those that expose sensitivity, failure conditions, and residual uncertainty. The contribution is a decision-oriented synthesis that connects method selection to failure cost and treats reproducibility, provenance, and bounded generalization as first-order design requirements.