Operando NMR spectroscopic analysis of proton transfer in heterogeneous photocatalytic reactions

Xue Lu Wang, Wenqing Liu, Yan-Yan Yu, Yanhong Song, Wen Qi Fang, Daxiu Wei, Xue-Qing Gong (), Ye-Feng Yao () and Hua Gui Yang ()
Additional contact information
Xue Lu Wang: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology
Wenqing Liu: Shanghai Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, East China Normal University
Yan-Yan Yu: Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Centre for Computational Chemistry, Research Institute of Industrial Catalysis, East China University of Science and Technology
Yanhong Song: Shanghai Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, East China Normal University
Wen Qi Fang: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology
Daxiu Wei: Shanghai Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, East China Normal University
Xue-Qing Gong: Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Centre for Computational Chemistry, Research Institute of Industrial Catalysis, East China University of Science and Technology
Ye-Feng Yao: Shanghai Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, East China Normal University
Hua Gui Yang: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Proton transfer (PT) processes in solid–liquid phases play central roles throughout chemistry, biology and materials science. Identification of PT routes deep into the realistic catalytic process is experimentally challenging, thus leaving a gap in our understanding. Here we demonstrate an approach using operando nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy that allows to quantitatively describe the complex species dynamics of generated H2/HD gases and liquid intermediates in pmol resolution during photocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In this system, the effective protons for HER are mainly from H2O, and CH3OH evidently serves as an outstanding sacrificial agent reacting with holes, further supported by our density functional theory calculations. This results rule out controversy about the complicated proton sources for HER. The operando NMR method provides a direct molecular-level insight with the methodology offering exciting possibilities for the quantitative studies of mechanisms of proton-involved catalytic reactions in solid–liquid phases.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms11918 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:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms11918

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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11918

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 ().