Cobalt Plasmonic Superstructures Enable Almost 100% Broadband Photon Efficient CO2 Photocatalysis

• DOI: 10.1002/adma.202000014
• Publication Date: 2020-05-11T06:36:29Z
• Authors: Kai Feng; Shenghua Wang; Dake Zhang; Lu Wang; Yingying Yu; Kun Feng; Zhao Li; Zhijie Zhu; Chaoran Li; Mujin Cai; Zhiyi Wu; Ning Kong; Binhang Yan; Jun Zhong; Xiaohong Zhang; Geoffrey A. Ozin; Le He
• Keywords: 02 engineering and technology; 0210 nano-technology; 01 natural sciences; 7. Clean energy; 0104 chemical sciences

The efficiency of heterogeneous photocatalysis for converting solar to chemical energy is low on a per photon basis mainly because the difficulty capturing and utilizing light across entire spectral wavelength range. This challenge addressed herein with plasmonic superstructure, fashioned as an array nanoscale needles comprising cobalt nanocrystals assembled within sheath porous silica grown fluorine tin oxide substrate. superstructure can strongly absorb sunlight through different mechanisms including enhanced excitation by hybridization Co nanoparticles in close proximity, well inter- intra-band transitions. With nearly 100% harvesting ability, it drives photothermal hydrogenation carbon dioxide 20-fold rate increase from silica-supported catalyst. present work bridges gap between strong light-absorbing superstructures CO2 catalysis toward complete utilization energy.