Excitonic Effects in Absorption Spectra of Carbon Dioxide Reduction Photocatalysts

The formation and disassociation of excitons plays a crucial role in any photovoltaic or photocatalytic application. However, excitonic effects are seldom considered in materials discovery studies due to the monumental computational cost associated with the examination of these properties. Here, we study the excitonic properties of nearly 50 photocatalysts using state-of-the-art Bethe-Salpeter formalism. These $\sim$ 50 materials were recently recognized as promising photocatalysts for CO$_2$ reduction through a data-driven screening of 68,860 materials. Here, we propose three screening criteria based on the optical properties of these materials, taking excitonic effects into account, to further down select 6 materials. Remarkably we find a strong correlation between the exciton binding energies obtained from the Bethe-Salpeter formalism and those obtained from the computationally much less-expensive Wannier-Mott model for these chemically diverse $\sim$ 50 materials. This work presents a new paradigm towards the inclusion of excitonic effects in future materials discovery for solar-energy harvesting applications.