PhotoCatRed · Visible-light-driven Photocatalytic CO2 Reduction to Solar fuels by multinary N-Graphene based Heterostructure Composites

Energy shortage and environment pollution are two critical threats faced by the present society. Carbon dioxide (CO2), the well known greenhouse gas is a major cause of global warming but at same time it is also an abundant resource for hydrocarbon energy fuels. Photocatalytic CO2 reduction (PCO2R) into sustainable solar fuels is a highly enticing challenge for simultaneous settling of energy and environmental issues. So far, manifold photocatalysts including inorganic semiconductors, noble metal complexes, metal organic frameworks, 2D nanomaterials etc. have been demonstrated potential candidates for CO2 photo reduction. But the overall catalytic performance of the state of art materials is still far from practical application due to one or combined problems of low conversion efficiency, poor light harvesting, low stability, high electron-hole recombination rates, high cost and lack of product selectivity. Thus there is a steady demand for high performance photocatalysts preferably multinary heterostructure designs that can compensate for the shortcomings of the single components. The PCO2R project aims to develop novel multinary N-doped graphene based heterostructure composites decorated with titanium dioxide semiconductor, gold-copper bimetallic nanoalloys and/or transition metal dichalcogenides-copper nanoparticles as robust high efficiency photocatalysts for visible light reduction of CO2. The heterostructure composite is custom designed to overcome the major existing challenges and is anticipated to have great potential as a practically useful photocatalyst that can reduce CO2 under irradiation of visible light along with high product selectivity. The PCO2R project will confer significant scientific advances in the field of materials design, synthesis and catalysis strategies in addition to the knowledge transfer, training activities and long run societal interests.