Visible-Light-Driven Lanthanum Ferrite Nanocatalysts for Environmental Remediation: A Review

Transforming sunlight into transportable and storable fuels addresses two critical global challenges: clean energy production and environmental sustainability. Central to this effort are functional nanomaterials, whose performance, stability, and cost-effectiveness determine the efficiency of solar energy conversion and storage systems. Atomically thin nanomaterials and their heterostructures have emerged as advanced photocatalytic platforms, leveraging exceptionally high surface-to-volume ratios, tunable nanoscale electronic structures, and interface-dominated charge-transfer dynamics to enhance photocatalytic performance. Among these, perovskite-type lanthanum ferrite (LaFeO 3 ) has attracted intense research interest because of its elemental abundance, facile synthesis, compositional flexibility, high catalytic activity, broad solar absorption, and band gap tunability. Nanoscale LaFeO 3 nanotubes, combining a high surface area with a stable perovskite structure, are particularly promising for photocatalysis, electrochemical energy storage, sensing, and catalysis. Nevertheless, pristine perovskite oxides suffer from inherent limitations, including poor surface area, rapid recombination of photogenerated charge carriers, and low solar light utilization, which restrict their practical environmental applications. This review introduces the fundamental concepts underpinning perovskite photocatalysts for water purification and provides an in-depth discussion of key performance enhancement strategies such as heterojunction formation, cocatalyst decoration, and structural composition control to illuminate pathways for improving LaFeO 3 photocatalytic activity. Special emphasis is placed on nanoscale design parameters, including particle size, morphology, surface and interface engineering, and defect modulation, and their critical roles in governing structure–property correlations. Unlike generalized perovskite reviews, this work investigates the nanoscale mechanisms controlling charge separation, transport, and interfacial reaction kinetics with a focus on wastewater treatment. Coverage extends to CO 2 reduction and hydrogen (H 2 ) evolution, demonstrating the versatility of LaFeO 3 -based systems. By analyzing current challenges and defining future research directions at the nanoscale engineering level, this Review offers a strategic roadmap for advancing LaFeO 3 -based nanomaterials toward sustainable and eco-friendly environmental technologies.