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Solar light-driven selective photoelectrochemical CO2 reduction to CO in aqueous media using Si nanowire arrays decorated with Au and Au-based metal nanoparticles

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Abstract

To address recent energy and environmental issues, such as global warming and resource depletion, significant interest has been shown in carbon dioxide (CO2) fixation based on photoelectrochemical processes under solar light irradiation. The present paper describes the applicability of gold nanoparticles-decorated silicon nanowire arrays (Au/SiNW) as photoelectrodes to promote CO2 reduction. The decoration with Au nanoparticles of SiNW was performed by an electroless plating utilizing surface hydrogen-terminated silicon groups, generated during the nanowire formation process. Au/SiNW exhibits efficient photoelectrochemical performance for CO2 reduction to produce CO selectively in an aqueous medium under simulated solar light irradiation owing to its vertically aligned nanowire structure and Au nanoparticles as cocatalysts. The former provides high specific surface area and light trapping effect, and the latter induces selective interaction with CO2. Moreover, a unique two-steps method for Au decoration that consists of photo-assisted deposition of copper nanoparticles and the following electroless plating to replace Cu atoms to Au ones achieves more uniform decoration of SiNW with highly dispersed core–shell structured Cu@Au nanoparticles. The resulting photoelectrode, termed Cu@Au/SiNW, shows improved selectivity toward CO production and gives a good Faradic efficiency of 72% in an aqueous medium.

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Acknowledgements

The X-ray absorption measurements were performed at the BL-01B1 facility of SPring-8 at the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI) (Nos. 2017B1469, 2016A1260, and 2015A1543).

Funding

The present work was financially supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (Nos. 15K17903 and 21K05231).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka Metropolitan University, 1-1, Gakuen-cho, Naka-ku, Sakai, Osaka, 599-8531, Japan

    Yu Horiuchi & Masaya Matsuoka

  2. Department of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka Prefecture University, 1-1, Gakuen-cho, Naka-ku, Sakai, Osaka, 599-8531, Japan

    Yu Horiuchi, Keisuke Miyazaki, Mika Tachibana, Kenichi Nishigaki & Masaya Matsuoka

  3. LG Japan Lab Inc., 4F, Kyoto Research Park 2, Chudoji Minami-cho 134, Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto, 600-8813, Japan

    Kenichi Nishigaki

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  1. Yu Horiuchi
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  4. Kenichi Nishigaki
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. YH and MM contributed to experimental plan, data curation, and writing original draft. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were mainly performed by KM, MT, and KN. All authors checked previous versions of the manuscript and read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yu Horiuchi or Masaya Matsuoka.

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Horiuchi, Y., Miyazaki, K., Tachibana, M. et al. Solar light-driven selective photoelectrochemical CO2 reduction to CO in aqueous media using Si nanowire arrays decorated with Au and Au-based metal nanoparticles. Res Chem Intermed 49, 1131–1146 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11164-023-04959-y

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