Photoelectrochemical Reduction of Carbon Dioxide with a Copper Graphitic Carbon Nitride Photocathode

Huijun Yu, Hagai Cohen, Ronny Neumann*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Research on the photoreduction of CO2 often has been dominated by the use of sacrificial reducing agents. A pathway that avoids this problem would be the development of photocathodes for CO2 reduction that could then be coupled to a photoanodic oxygen evolution reaction. Here, we present the use of copper-substituted graphitic carbon nitride (Cu−CN) on a fluorinated tin oxide (FTO) electrode for the photoelectrochemical two-electron reduction of CO2 to CO as a major product (>95 %) and formic acid (<5 %). The results show that at a potential of −2.5 V versus Fc\Fc+ the CO2 reduction activity of Cu−CN on FTO electrode improves by 25 % upon illumination by visible light with a faradaic efficiency of nearly 100 %. Independently, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy conclusively shows a pronounced increase in the electrical conductivity of the Cu−CN upon white light illumination under vacuum and a contactless measuring configuration. This photo-assisted charge mobility is shown to play a key role in the increased reactivity and faradaic efficiency for the reduction of CO2.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)13513-13517
Number of pages5
JournalChemistry - A European Journal
Volume27
Issue number54
StatePublished - 24 Sep 2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH

Keywords

  • CO reduction
  • copper-carbon nitride
  • electrochemistry
  • photochemistry
  • XPS

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