A spongy nickel-organic CO 2 reduction photocatalyst for nearly 100% selective CO production

• Main Authors: Doeff, Marca M., Koper, Marc T. M., Niu, Kaiyang, Xu, You, Wang, Haicheng, Ye, Rong, Xin, Huolin L., Lin, Feng, Tian, Chixia, Lum, Yanwei, Bustillo, Karen C., Ager, Joel, Xu, Rong, Zheng, Haimei
• Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Catalysts; DRNTU::Engineering::Chemical engineering; Carbon Dioxide
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/90195; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/47193
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Solar-driven photocatalytic conversion of CO2 into fuels has attracted a lot of interest; however, developing active catalysts that can selectively convert CO2 to fuels with desirable reaction products remains a grand challenge. For instance, complete suppression of the competing H2 evolution during photocatalytic CO2-to-CO conversion has not been achieved before. We design and synthesize a spongy nickel-organic heterogeneous photocatalyst via a photochemical route. The catalyst has a crystalline network architecture with a high concentration of defects. It is highly active in converting CO2 to CO, with a production rate of ~1.6 × 104 μmol hour−1 g−1. No measurable H2 is generated during the reaction, leading to nearly 100% selective CO production over H2 evolution. When the spongy Ni-organic catalyst is enriched with Rh or Ag nanocrystals, the controlled photocatalytic CO2 reduction reactions generate formic acid and acetic acid. Achieving such a spongy nickel-organic photocatalyst is a critical step toward practical production of high-value multicarbon fuels using solar energy.