Photocatalytic syngas synthesis from CO₂ and H₂O using ultrafine CeO₂-decorated layered double hydroxide nanosheets under visible-light up to 600 nm

Abstract

The rational design of photocatalyst that can effectively reduce CO₂ under visible light (l>400 nm), and simultaneously precise control of the products syngas (CO/H₂) ratio is highly desirable for the Fischer-Tropsch reaction. In this work, we synthesized a series of CeO₂-decorated layered double hydroxides (LDHs, Ce-x) samples for photocatalytic CO₂ reduction. It was found that the selectivity and productivity of CO and H₂ from photoreduction of CO₂ in conjunction with Ru-complex as photosensitizer performed an obvious “volcano-like” trend, with the highest point at Ce-0.15 and the CO/H₂ ratio can be widely tunable from 1/7.7 to 1/1.3. Furthermore, compared with LDH, Ce-0.15 also drove photocatalytic CO₂ to syngas under 600 nm irradiation. It implied that an optimum amount of CeO₂ modifying LDH promoted the photoreduction of CO₂ to syngas. This report gives the way to fully utilize the rare earth elements and provides a promising route to enhance the photo-response ability and charge injection efficiency of LDH-based photocatalysts in the synthesis of syngas with a tunable ratio under visible light irradiation.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

visible light catalysis / CO₂ conversion / layered double hydroxide / rare earth elements

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. U1707603, 21878008, 21625101, U1507102, 21922801), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Nos. 2182047, 2202036) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. XK1802-6, XK1902, 12060093063, 2312018RC07).

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-020-1947-4 and is accessible for authorized users.

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