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Updated: Jun 30, 2025

CO2 Photoreduction to CH4 Performance Under Concentrating Solar Light
Published on: June 12, 2019
Efficient Photoreduction of CO2 to CO with 100% Selectivity by Slowing Down Electron Transport
Cheng Chen1,2,3, Mingge Wu1,3, Yifan Xu4
1Key Laboratory of Environmental Nanotechnology and Health Effects, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
Abstract:
It remains challenging to obtain a single product in the gas-solid photocatalytic reduction of CO2 because CO and CH4 are usually produced simultaneously. This study presents the design of the I-type nested heterojunction TiO2/BiVO4 with controllable electron transport by modulating the TiO2 component. This study demonstrates that slowing electron transport could enable TiO2/BiVO4-4 to generate CO with 100% selectivity. In addition, modifying TiO2/BiVO4-4 by loading a Cu single atom further increased the CO product yield by 3.83 times (17.33 μmol·gcat-1·h-1), while maintaining 100% selectivity for CO. Characterization and density functional theory (DFT) calculations revealed that the selectivity was mainly determined by the electron transport of the support, whereas CO2 was efficiently adsorbed and activated by the Cu single atom. Such a two-step regulation strategy of combining heterojunction with single atom enhances the possibility of simultaneously obtaining high selectivity and high yield in the photocatalytic reduction of CO2.
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