Purpurin intercalated layered double hydroxide nanocomposites for improved CO2 visible photocatalytic reduction: Dye-intercalation stabilization and sensitization

Abstract

Purpurin(pp) can be used as a photosensitive molecule in photocatalytic systems due to its excellent absorption of visible light, but its application is limited due to its poor stability under light. Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) can act as molecular containers due to their interlayer anion exchangeability, introducing target anions into the interlayer of LDHs and improving the instability of anions by utilizing the 2D confinement environment between LDHs layers. A series of co-intercalation materials with different ratios of pp and dodecyl sulfonate (SDS) were prepared through the hydrothermal method in this work, denoted as SDS-pp(x%)/LDHs. Compared with pp, the absorbance retention rate of SDS-pp(x%)/LDHs increased from 12.5% to 90% after 5 h of light exposure. Then its potential application in visible photocatalytic reduction of CO2 was explored. When the intercalation ratio of pp is 3%, the performance is optimal. Compared with ZnAl LDHs, the yield of CO produced by SDS-pp(3%)/LDHs was increased by 12 times and a small amount of 8-electron reduction product CH4 appeared. Through mechanism exploration, the matching energy level relationship between pp and LDHs promotes electron transfer from pp to LDHs. In addition, the catalyst exhibits good cyclic photocatalytic reduction performance for CO2 due to its stable intercalation structure.