Photocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) is an attractive process to convert CO2 into valuable chemicals. But this reaction is often restricted by the poor mass transfer of CO2 in the liquid phase. Here, we have developed a triphase photocatalytic CO2RR system by supporting Ag‐decorated TiO2 nanoparticles at a gas–water boundary with hydrophobic–hydrophilic abrupt interfacial wettability. Such a triphase system allows the rapid delivery of gas‐phase CO2 to the surface of photocatalysts while maintaining an efficient water supply and uncovered active sites. Ag‐TiO2 supported at the gas–water boundary showed a CO2 reduction rate of 305.7 μmol g−1 h−1, without hole scavengers, approximately 8 times higher than the nanoparticles dispersed in the liquid phase. Even using diluted CO2 (10 %) as the reactant, the CO2RR activity was superior to most reported Ag‐TiO2 based photocatalysts using pure CO2. The findings provide a general strategy to promote the interfacial CO2 mass transfer to improve photoactivity and selectivity.
Photocatalysis as one of the future environment technologies has been investigated for decades.D espite great efforts in catalyst engineering,t he widely used powder dispersion and photoelectrode systems are still restricted by sluggish interfacial mass transfer and chemical processes.Here we develop ascalable bilayer paper from commercialized TiO 2 and carbon nanomaterials,s elf-supported at gas-liquid-solid interfaces for photothermal-assisted triphase photocatalysis. The photogeneration of reactive oxygen species can be facilitated through fast oxygen diffusion over triphase interfaces,w hile the interfacial photothermal effect promotes the following free radical reaction for advanced oxidation of phenol. Under full spectrum irradiation, the triphase system shows 13 times higher reaction rate than diphase controlled system, achieving 88.4 %mineralization of high concentration phenol within 90 min full spectrum irradiation. The bilayer paper also exhibits high stability over 40 times cycling experiments and sunlight driven feasibility,s howing potentials for large scale photocatalytic applications by being further integrated into atriphase flowr eactor.
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