Selective visible-light-driven photocatalytic CO2 reduction to CH4 mediated by atomically thin CuIn5S8 layers

Xiaodong Li, Yongfu Sun (), Jiaqi Xu, Yanjie Shao, Ju Wu, Xiaoliang Xu, Yang Pan, Huanxin Ju, Junfa Zhu and Yi Xie ()
Additional contact information
Xiaodong Li: University of Science and Technology of China
Yongfu Sun: University of Science and Technology of China
Jiaqi Xu: University of Science and Technology of China
Yanjie Shao: University of Science and Technology of China
Ju Wu: University of Science and Technology of China
Xiaoliang Xu: University of Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yang Pan: University of Science and Technology of China
Huanxin Ju: University of Science and Technology of China
Junfa Zhu: University of Science and Technology of China
Yi Xie: University of Science and Technology of China

Nature Energy, 2019, vol. 4, issue 8, 690-699

Abstract: Abstract Due to the large number of possible products and their similar reduction potentials, a significant challenge in CO2 photoreduction is achieving selectivity to a single product while maintaining high conversion efficiency. Controlling the reaction intermediates that form on the catalyst surface through careful catalyst design is therefore crucial. Here, we prepare atomically thin layers of sulfur-deficient CuIn5S8 that contain charge-enriched Cu–In dual sites, which are highly selective towards photocatalytic production of CH4 from CO2. We propose that the formation of a highly stable Cu–C–O–In intermediate at the Cu–In dual sites is the key feature determining selectivity. We suggest that this configuration not only lowers the overall activation energy barrier, but also converts the endoergic protonation step to an exoergic reaction process, thus changing the reaction pathway to form CH4 instead of CO. As a result, the CuIn5S8 single-unit-cell layers achieve near 100% selectivity for visible-light-driven CO2 reduction to CH4 over CO, with a rate of 8.7 μmol g−1 h−1.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0431-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:natene:v:4:y:2019:i:8:d:10.1038_s41560-019-0431-1

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41560-019-0431-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan

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