Band-Gap Engineering: A New Tool for Tailoring the Activity of Semiconducting Oxide Catalysts for CO Oxidation

Cation or anion vacancies in semiconducting oxides usually benefit activity for CO oxidation. To study the nature of vacancy engineering for a thermocatalytic reaction, we adopted lattice doping of cations with varied valence states to construct anion and cation vacancies in n-type and p-type semiconducting CeO₂ and NiO, respectively. Doping cations can effectively regulate the number of the vacancies, thus tailoring the activity for CO oxidation. The strong correlation of activation energy and specific activity with a catalyst band gap verified that the nature of vacancy engineering for activity of CeO₂ and NiO for CO oxidation can be attributed to tailoring of the band gap. The larger the vacancy amount, the smaller the band gap, and the lower the activation energy, thus giving a higher specific activity. Band-gap engineering, widely used for photocatalytic processes, can be a new tool for tailoring the activity of semiconducting oxide catalysts for thermocatalytic reactions.