Highly selective photothermal conversion of CO₂ to ethylene using hierarchical boxwood ball-like Weyl semimetal WTe₂ catalysts

Abstract

WTe2 is developed for efficient photothermal CO2 conversion to C2H4 for the first time. DFT calculations and in situ FTIR spectroscopy reveal that both W and Te as active sites promote C–C coupling to form C2H4 by suitable W–Te atomic distance.