Interfacial reaction on Janus metal heterojunction co-catalysts is found to promote their activity and selectivity for photocatalytic conversion of CO2 to CH4.
Order engineering has been performed on PdCu co-catalysts for enhanced photocatalytic performance in conversion of CO2 to CH4 based on the disorder–order transformation from an A1 alloy phase to a B2 intermetallic phase.
The synergism of surface strain and interfacial polarization has been studied on Pd@Au core–shell cocatalysts for boosting the photocatalytic performance of TiO2 in CO2-to-CO conversion.
Photocatalytic conversion of CO into CH represents an appealing approach to alleviate the world's continued reliance on fossil fuels and global warming resulting from increasing CO concentrations in the atmosphere. However, its practical application is greatly limited by serious electron-hole recombination in the photocatalysts and the production of CO and H as side reactions. Herein, for the first time, it is demonstrated that the photocatalytic reduction of CO to CH can be significantly improved through the simultaneous alloying and hydriding of metal cocatalysts. The isolation of Cu and H atoms in Pd lattices play three roles in the enhancement of CO to CH conversion: 1) Cu atoms provide catalytic sites to reduce CO into CO and then to CH to suppress H evolution; 2) H atoms improve the electron-trapping ability of cocatalysts; and 3) H atoms accelerate the reduction of CO to CH , which is the rate-limiting procedure in the conversion of CO into CH . Arising from the synergistic interplay between Pd-H and Cu-CO sites, C N -Pd Cu H (15 mg) achieves 100 % selectivity for CH production with an average rate of 0.018 μmol h under visible-light irradiation. This work provides insights into the design of a cocatalyst for highly selective CO conversion through lattice engineering at atomic precision.
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