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Constructing subtle grain boundaries on Au sheets for enhanced CO2 photoreduction

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Abstract

Photocatalytic reduction of CO2 into value-added products is a promising strategy for mitigating environmental and energy problems simultaneously. Herein, we developed Au sheets with subtle grain boundaries on ultrathin Ni(OH)2 nanosheets as efficient photocatalysts for CO2 reduction. According to mechanistic studies, grain boundaries on the Au sheets served as electron trapping sites which enabled the optimization of electron-hole separation. Moreover, grain boundaries perturbed electron distribution, which assisted in stabilizing CO2δ− and HCOO* intermediates. As a result, the unique hybrid structure achieved a high rate of 75.2 µmol g−1 h−1 for CO2 photoreduction. This work demonstrates the importance of defect engineering in designing active photocatalysts and also provides insight into development of related photo-energy conversion schemes.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (21925204), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U19A2015, 21673214, U1732272), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFA-0405600), the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences of the CAS (QYZDB-SSW-SLH017), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, the USTC Research Funds of the Double First-Class Initiative (YD2340002002), the Taishan Scholar Program of Shandong Province of China (tsqn201909122), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019TQ0300). This work was partially carried out at the USTC Center for Micro and Nanoscale Research and Fabrication.

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, CAS Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics, Key Laboratory of Surface and Interface Chemistry and Energy Catalysis of Anhui Higher Education Institutes, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Xu Li, Tingting Zheng, Lan Zhang, Songtao Zhao, Yinuo Chen, Miaojin Wei, Chunyan Shang, Jun Bao & Jie Zeng

  2. College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266042, China

    Songtao Zhao

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  1. Xu Li
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  2. Tingting Zheng
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  3. Lan Zhang
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  4. Songtao Zhao
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  5. Yinuo Chen
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  6. Miaojin Wei
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  7. Chunyan Shang
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  8. Jun Bao
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  9. Jie Zeng
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jun Bao or Jie Zeng.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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The supporting information is available online at http://chem.scichina.com and http://link.springer.com/journal/11426. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

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Li, X., Zheng, T., Zhang, L. et al. Constructing subtle grain boundaries on Au sheets for enhanced CO2 photoreduction. Sci. China Chem. 63, 1705–1710 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-020-9757-5

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