A rich catalog of C–C bonded species formed in CO2 reduction on a plasmonic photocatalyst

Dinumol Devasia, Andrew J. Wilson, Jaeyoung Heo, Varun Mohan and Prashant K. Jain ()
Additional contact information
Dinumol Devasia: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Andrew J. Wilson: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Jaeyoung Heo: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Varun Mohan: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Prashant K. Jain: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract The understanding and rational design of heterogeneous catalysts for complex reactions, such as CO2 reduction, requires knowledge of elementary steps and chemical species prevalent on the catalyst surface under operating conditions. Using in situ nanoscale surface-enhanced Raman scattering, we probe the surface of a Ag nanoparticle during plasmon-excitation-driven CO2 reduction in water. Enabled by the high spatiotemporal resolution and surface sensitivity of our method, we detect a rich array of C1–C4 species formed on the photocatalytically active surface. The abundance of multi-carbon compounds, such as butanol, suggests the favorability of kinetically challenging C–C coupling on the photoexcited Ag surface. Another advance of this work is the use of isotope labeling in nanoscale probing, which allows confirmation that detected species are the intermediates and products of the catalytic reaction rather than spurious contaminants. The surface chemical knowledge made accessible by our approach will inform the modeling and engineering of catalysts.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22868-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-22868-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22868-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().