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Updated: Oct 15, 2025

CO2 Photoreduction to CH4 Performance Under Concentrating Solar Light
Published on: June 12, 2019
Improving photosensitization for photochemical CO2-to-CO conversion
Ping Wang1, Ru Dong1, Song Guo1
1MOE International Joint Laboratory of Materials Microstructure, Institute for New Energy Materials and Low Carbon Technologies, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384, China.
Abstract:
Inspired by nature, improving photosensitization represents a vital direction for the development of artificial photosynthesis. The sensitization ability of photosensitizers (PSs) reflects in their electron-transfer ability, which highly depends on their excited-state lifetime and redox potential. Herein, for the first time, we put forward a facile strategy to improve sensitizing ability via finely tuning the excited state of Ru(II)-PSs (Ru-1-Ru-4) for efficient CO2 reduction. Remarkably, [Ru(Phen)2(3-pyrenylPhen)]2+ (Ru-3) exhibits the best sensitizing ability among Ru-1-Ru-4, over 17 times higher than that of typical Ru(Phen)3 2+. It can efficiently sensitize a dinuclear cobalt catalyst for CO2-to-CO conversion with a maximum turnover number of 66 480. Systematic investigations demonstrate that its long-lived excited state and suitable redox driving force greatly contributed to this superior sensitizing ability. This work provides a new insight into dramatically boosting photocatalytic CO2 reduction via improving photosensitization.
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