Redispersion of Exsolved Cu Nanoparticles on Lafeo3 Photocatalyst for Tunable Photocatalytic Co2 Reduction

Abstract

The excessive exploitation and depletion of fossil fuels lead to escalation of CO 2 emission, which was responsible for the global climate worsening. Cu-based solid catalyst could enable the transformation of CO 2 to various hydrocarbons via a sustainable photocatalytic pathway. Herein, we fabricated a Cu decorated LaFeO 3 photocatalyst by a consecutive in-situ exsolution (in H 2 ) /redispersion (in N 2 ) strategy. The dispersion of Cu is significantly enhanced by 3 times from 13.8% (exsolved) to 41.4% (redispersed). Combined theoretical and experimental results confirms the successful formation of uniformly dispersed Cu active site for efficient CO 2 adsorption and photocatalytic conversion. The enhancement of light absorption and manipulation of band structure were also collectively achieved, offering the optimized catalyst with a superior CO and CH 4 production than its counterparts. In addition, the activity of photocatalytic water splitting was sharply suppressed, suggesting the high selectivity of photocatalytic pathway. This work may offer a new thinking of design principle of photocatalysts toward selective CO 2 conversion.

Keywords: photocatalysis, CO2 reduction, LaFeO3, Cu, exsolution, dispersion