Rich oxygen vacancies in confined heterostructured TiO2@In2S3 hybrid for boosting solar-driven CO2 reduction

Abstract

Solar energy driving CO₂ reduction is a potential strategy that not only mitigates the greenhouse effect caused by high CO₂ level in atmosphere, but also yields carbon chemicals/fuels at the same time. Herein, a facile way to design the heterogeneous TiO₂@In₂S₃ hollow structures possessing robust light harvesting in both ultraviolet and visible regions is proposed and exhibits a higher generation rate of 25.35 and 1.24 μmol·g^-1·h^-1 for photocatalytic CO₂ reduction to CO and CH₄, respectively. The excellent photocatalytic catalytic performance comes from i) the confined heterostructured TiO₂@In₂S₃ possesses a suitable band structure and a broadband-light absorbing capacity for CO₂ photoreduction, ii) the rich interfaces between nanosized TiO₂ and In₂S₃ on the shell can significantly reduce the diffusion length of carriers and enhance the utilization efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs, and iii) enriched surface oxygen vacancies can provide more active sites for CO₂ adsorption.

Keywords: Confined heterostructure; Light harvesting; Rich oxygen vacancy; Solar-driven CO(2) reduction; TiO(2)@In(2)S(3).