Construction of Heterostructured Sn/TiO2 /Si Photocathode for Efficient Photoelectrochemical CO2 Reduction

Chengjin Li; Xiaoxia Zhou; Qingming Zhang; Yi Xue; Zhaoyu Kuang; Han Zhao; Chung-Yuan Mou; Hangrong Chen

doi:10.1002/cssc.202200188

Construction of Heterostructured Sn/TiO₂ /Si Photocathode for Efficient Photoelectrochemical CO₂ Reduction

ChemSusChem. 2022 Apr 22;15(8):e202200188. doi: 10.1002/cssc.202200188. Epub 2022 Mar 23.

Authors

Chengjin Li^{1

2}, Xiaoxia Zhou², Qingming Zhang^{1

2}, Yi Xue^{1

2}, Zhaoyu Kuang², Han Zhao³, Chung-Yuan Mou³, Hangrong Chen^{2

4}

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials and chemical, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, 516 Jungong Road, Shanghai, 200093, P. R. China.
² State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1295 Dingxi Road, Shanghai, 200050, P. R. China.
³ National Taiwan University, Department of Chemistry, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan.
⁴ School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1 Sub-lane Xiangshan, Hangzhou, 310024, P. R. China.

PMID: 35243793
DOI: 10.1002/cssc.202200188

Abstract

Using renewable energy to convert CO₂ into liquid products, as a sustainable way to produce fuels and chemicals, has attracted intense attention. Herein, a novel heterostructured photocathode composed of Si wafer, TiO₂ layer, and Sn metal particles has been successfully fabricated by combining of a facile hydrothermal and electrodeposition method. The obtained Sn/TiO₂ /Si photocathode shows enhanced light absorption performance by the surface plasmon resonance effect of Sn metal. Especially, the Sn/TiO₂ /Si photocathode together with rich oxygen vacancy defects jointly promote photoelectrochemical CO₂ reduction, harvesting a high faradaic efficiency of HCOOH and a desirable average current density (-4.72 mA cm^-2 ) at -1.0 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode. Significantly, the photocathode Sn/TiO₂ /Si also shows good stability due to the design of protecting layer TiO₂ . This study provides a facile strategy of constructing an efficient photocathode to improve the light absorption performance and the electron transfer efficiency, exhibiting great potential in the CO₂ reduction.

Keywords: CO2 reduction; Sn/TiO2/Si; formic acid; photocathode; photoelectrochemistry.

Abstract

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