Three basic open access software tools for academic analysis of photocatalytic particles

Abstract

There is currently great interest in photocatalytic degradation technologies of pollutants in industrial effluents. This is due to the need to reduce the environmental pollution generated by the textile industry’s high demand of clothing for fast fashion; in addition to severe environmental problems, this also generates social problems. Since the catalysts of this type of processes are usually nanoparticles of metal oxides such as zinc and titanium, it is necessary to promote research into the synthesis and evaluation of photocatalysts. Therefore, this article describes three free basic access tools for the academic analysis of nanoparticles, from experimental design to representation, using the study of kinetics and particle size analysis. After pre-selecting easily accessible software, it was found that RStudio, J-Image, and Vesta are very useful programs for the analysis of nanoparticles in the respective areas of statistical processing, image analysis, and three-dimensional representation.