Abstract
A simple solution-chemistry method has been investigated to prepare crystal cuprous oxide (Cu2O) incorporated with reduced graphene oxide (designated as Cu2O-rGO-x, where x represents the contents of rGO = 1%, 5% and 10%) in this work. These Cu2O-rGO-x composites combine the prospective advantages of rhombic dodecahedra Cu2O together with rGO nanosheets which have been studied as visible-light-sensitive catalysts for the photocatalytic production of methanol from CO2. Among the Cu2O-rGO-x photocatalysts, the methanol yield photocatalyzed by Cu2O-rGO-5% can be observed to be 355.26 μmol g−1cat, which is ca. 36 times higher than that of pristine Cu2O nanocrystal in the 20th hour under visible light irradiation. The improved activity may be attributed to the enhanced absorption ability of visible light, the superior separation of electron–hole pairs, well-dispersed Cu2O nanocrystals and the increased photostability of Cu2O, which are evidenced by employing UV-vis diffuse reflection spectroscopy, photoluminescence, scanning electron microscopy/transmission electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, respectively. This work demonstrates an easy and cost-effective route to prepare non-noble photocatalysts for efficient CO2 recovery in artificial photosynthesis.
Highlights
In the past decades, global warming, which is causing serious global climate change problems and ocean acidification, has been becoming more and more severe with the increase of greenhouse gases [1]
The results show that all the diffraction features of crystal Cu2O-reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-x composites are located at 2θ of 29.6◦, 36.4◦, 42.3◦, 61.4◦, 73.6◦ and 77.5◦ which can be assigned to (110), (111), (200), (220), (311), and (222), respectively
This indicates the presence of a crystal phase of Cu2O (JCPDS #78-2076) in the Cu2O-rGO-x composites
Summary
Global warming, which is causing serious global climate change problems and ocean acidification, has been becoming more and more severe with the increase of greenhouse gases (e.g., carbon dioxide) [1]. In order to reduce CO2 emissions, technologies developed for carbon capture, storage and utilization (CCSU) have been widely implemented [2,3] Among these possible technologies, the conversion of CO2 into useful chemicals or fuels is considered as one of the most promising approaches to deal with energy and environmental issues at the same time [4,5,6]. Developments in visible-light-driven photocatalysts for artificial photosynthesis are crucial To address this issue, many works have focused on enhancing the visible-light-active photocatalysts by using methods such as doping the semiconductors with non-metal/metal ions [20,21,22,23], engineering semiconductor structures [24], exposing a facet of the semiconductors [21,25,26,27], and semiconductor coupling [28,29]. These prepared photocatalysts, by using the above-mentioned routes, possess better charge carrier transfer, leading to a notable improvement in the photocatalytic performance under visible light
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