Polymorph selection towards photocatalytic gaseous CO2 hydrogenation

Tingjiang Yan; Lu Wang; Yan Liang; Meysam Makaremi; Thomas E Wood; Ying Dai; Baibiao Huang; Feysal M Ali; Yuchan Dong; Geoffrey A Ozin

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-10524-2

Polymorph selection towards photocatalytic gaseous CO₂ hydrogenation

Nat Commun. 2019 Jun 7;10(1):2521. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-10524-2.

Authors

Tingjiang Yan^{1

2}, Lu Wang³, Yan Liang⁴, Meysam Makaremi³, Thomas E Wood³, Ying Dai⁵, Baibiao Huang⁴, Feysal M Ali³, Yuchan Dong³, Geoffrey A Ozin⁶

Affiliations

¹ The Key Laboratory of Life-Organic Analysis, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, Shandong, 273165, P. R. China. tingjiangn@163.com.
² Materials Chemistry and Nanochemistry Research Group, Solar Fuels Cluster, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, 80 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3H6, Canada. tingjiangn@163.com.
³ Materials Chemistry and Nanochemistry Research Group, Solar Fuels Cluster, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, 80 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3H6, Canada.
⁴ School of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, 250100, P. R. China.
⁵ School of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, 250100, P. R. China. daiy60@sdu.edu.cn.
⁶ Materials Chemistry and Nanochemistry Research Group, Solar Fuels Cluster, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, 80 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3H6, Canada. gozin@chem.utoronto.ca.

Abstract

Titanium dioxide is the only known material that can enable gas-phase CO₂ photocatalysis in its anatase and rutile polymorphic forms. Materials engineering of polymorphism provides a useful strategy for optimizing the performance metrics of a photocatalyst. In this paper, it is shown that the less well known rhombohedral polymorph of indium sesquioxide, like its well-documented cubic polymorph, is a CO₂ hydrogenation photocatalyst for the production of CH₃OH and CO. Significantly, the rhombohedral polymorph exhibits higher activity, superior stability and improved selectivity towards CH₃OH over CO. These gains in catalyst performance originate in the enhanced acidity and basicity of surface frustrated Lewis pairs in the rhombohedral form.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't