Rare-Earth Single Erbium Atoms for Enhanced Photocatalytic CO2 Reduction

Shufang Ji; Yang Qu; Tao Wang; Yuanjun Chen; Guofeng Wang; Xue Li; Juncai Dong; QiuYu Chen; Wanying Zhang; Zedong Zhang; Shiyou Liang; Rong Yu; Yu Wang; Dingsheng Wang; Yadong Li

doi:10.1002/anie.202003623

Rare-Earth Single Erbium Atoms for Enhanced Photocatalytic CO₂ Reduction

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2020 Jun 22;59(26):10651-10657. doi: 10.1002/anie.202003623. Epub 2020 Apr 15.

Authors

Shufang Ji¹, Yang Qu², Tao Wang³, Yuanjun Chen¹, Guofeng Wang², Xue Li², Juncai Dong⁴, QiuYu Chen², Wanying Zhang², Zedong Zhang¹, Shiyou Liang⁵, Rong Yu⁵, Yu Wang⁶, Dingsheng Wang¹, Yadong Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, P. R. China.
² Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Materials Chemistry (Heilongjiang University), Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, International Joint Research Center for Catalytic Technology, Harbin, 150080, P. R. China.
³ SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
⁴ Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, P. R. China.
⁵ Beijing National Center for Electron Microscopy and Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, P. R. China.
⁶ Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facilities, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201204, P. R. China.

PMID: 32189435
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202003623

Abstract

The solar-driven photocatalytic reduction of CO₂ (CO₂ RR) into chemical fuels is a promising route to enrich energy supplies and mitigate CO₂ emissions. However, low catalytic efficiency and poor selectivity, especially in a pure-water system, hinder the development of photocatalytic CO₂ RR owing to the lack of effective catalysts. Herein, we report a novel atom-confinement and coordination (ACC) strategy to achieve the synthesis of rare-earth single erbium (Er) atoms supported on carbon nitride nanotubes (Er₁ /CN-NT) with a tunable dispersion density of single atoms. Er₁ /CN-NT is a highly efficient and robust photocatalyst that exhibits outstanding CO₂ RR performance in a pure-water system. Experimental results and density functional theory calculations reveal the crucial role of single Er atoms in promoting photocatalytic CO₂ RR.

Keywords: erbium; nanocatalysis; photocatalytic CO2 reduction; rare-earth elements; single-atom catalysts.

Abstract

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