Synthesis of Ni2P/CdS and Pt/TiO2 nanocomposite for photoreduction of CO2 into methanol

Penumaka Nagababu; Sehba Anjum Mumtaz Ahmed; Y Taraka Prabhu; Ankush Kularkar; Subhamoy Bhowmick; Sadhana S Rayalu

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-87625-w

Synthesis of Ni₂P/CdS and Pt/TiO₂ nanocomposite for photoreduction of CO₂ into methanol

Sci Rep. 2021 Apr 13;11(1):8084. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-87625-w.

Authors

Penumaka Nagababu^{1

2}, Sehba Anjum Mumtaz Ahmed^{3

4}, Y Taraka Prabhu^{4

5}, Ankush Kularkar^{3

4}, Subhamoy Bhowmick^{4

6}, Sadhana S Rayalu^{7

8}

Affiliations

¹ Environmental Materials Division, CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur, 440020, India. p.nagababu@neeri.res.in.
² Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, 201002, India. p.nagababu@neeri.res.in.
³ Environmental Materials Division, CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur, 440020, India.
⁴ Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, 201002, India.
⁵ Department of Analytical and Structural Chemistry, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, 500007, India.
⁶ Kolkata Zonal Center, CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Calcutta, West Bengal, 700107, India.
⁷ Environmental Materials Division, CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur, 440020, India. s_rayalu@neeri.res.in.
⁸ Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, 201002, India. s_rayalu@neeri.res.in.

Abstract

It is a great challenge to convert thermochemically stable CO₂ into value-added products such as CH₄, CH₃OH, CO via utilizing solar energy. It is also a difficult task to develop an efficient catalyst for the reduction of CO₂. We have designed and synthesized noble metal-free photocatalytic nanostructure Ni₂P/CdS and Pt/TiO₂ for conversion of CO₂ to methanol in the presence of sacrificial donor triethylamine (TEA) and hydrogen peroxide. The synthesised catalysts physicochemical properties were studied by using several spectroscopic techniques like; XRD, UV-DRS, XPS, TEM, SEM and PL. Quantification of methanol by GC-MS showed encouraging results of 1424.8 and 2843 μmol g^-1 of catalyst for Pt/TiO₂ and 5 wt% Ni₂P/CdS composites, respectively. Thus, Ni₂P/CdS is a promising catalyst with higher productivity and significant selectivity than in-vogue catalysts.