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Rare-Earth Single Erbium Atoms for Enhanced Photocatalytic CO2 Reduction |
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| Authors: | Shufang Ji Prof Yang Qu Dr Tao Wang Yuanjun Chen Prof Guofeng Wang Xue Li Dr Juncai Dong QiuYu Chen Wanying Zhang Zedong Zhang Shiyou Liang Prof Rong Yu Dr Yu Wang Prof Dingsheng Wang Prof Yadong Li |
| Institution: | 1. Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084 P. R. China
These authors contributed equally to this work.;2. Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Materials Chemistry (Heilongjiang University), Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, International Joint Research Center for Catalytic Technology, Harbin, 150080 P. R. China These authors contributed equally to this work.;3. SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305 USA These authors contributed equally to this work.;4. Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Materials Chemistry (Heilongjiang University), Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, International Joint Research Center for Catalytic Technology, Harbin, 150080 P. R. China;5. Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049 P. R. China;6. Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084 P. R. China;7. Beijing National Center for Electron Microscopy and Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084 P. R. China;8. Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facilities, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201204 P. R. China |
| Abstract: | The solar-driven photocatalytic reduction of CO2 (CO2RR) into chemical fuels is a promising route to enrich energy supplies and mitigate CO2 emissions. However, low catalytic efficiency and poor selectivity, especially in a pure-water system, hinder the development of photocatalytic CO2RR owing to the lack of effective catalysts. Herein, we report a novel atom-confinement and coordination (ACC) strategy to achieve the synthesis of rare-earth single erbium (Er) atoms supported on carbon nitride nanotubes (Er1/CN-NT) with a tunable dispersion density of single atoms. Er1/CN-NT is a highly efficient and robust photocatalyst that exhibits outstanding CO2RR performance in a pure-water system. Experimental results and density functional theory calculations reveal the crucial role of single Er atoms in promoting photocatalytic CO2RR. |
| Keywords: | erbium nanocatalysis photocatalytic CO2 reduction rare-earth elements single-atom catalysts |