Highly Efficient Solar‐Driven Carbon Dioxide Reduction on Molybdenum Disulfide Catalyst Using Choline Chloride‐Based Electrolyte

Abstract

Conversion of CO2 to energy‐rich chemicals using renewable energy is of much interest to close the anthropogenic carbon cycle. However, the current photoelectrochemical systems are still far from being practically feasible. Here the successful demonstration of a continuous, energy efficient, and scalable solar‐driven CO2 reduction process based on earth‐abundant molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) catalyst, which works in synergy with an inexpensive hybrid electrolyte of choline chloride (a common food additive for livestock) and potassium hydroxide (KOH) is reported. The CO2 saturated hybrid electrolyte utilized in this study also acts as a buffer solution (pH ≈ 7.6) to adjust pH during the reactions. This study reveals that this system can efficiently convert CO2 to CO with solar‐to‐fuel and catalytic conversion efficiencies of 23% and 83%, respectively. Using density functional theory calculations, a new reaction mechanism in which the water molecules near the MoS2 cathode act as proton donors to facilitate the CO2 reduction process by MoS2 catalyst is proposed. This demonstration of a continuous, cost‐effective, and energy efficient solar driven CO2 conversion process is a key step toward the industrialization of this technology.

A Long‐Cycle‐Life Lithium–CO2 Battery with Carbon Neutrality

“…The MoS 2 NFs synthesis and characterization were performed and confirmed based on our previously established methods [24,26,27] . The assembled cell was first purged with pure CO 2 and then connected to a battery analyzer for cycling experiments.…”

“…Our recent findings on the superior electrocatalytic activity of nanostructured transition metal dichalcogenides for CO 2 reduction [22][23][24][25] and O 2 reduction in a Li-O 2 battery [5,26,27] , have led us to investigate whether this type of catalyst would enable carbon and Li 2 CO 3…”

Step-scheme porous g-C3N4/Zn0.2Cd0.8S-DETA composites for efficient and stable photocatalytic H2 production

“…Therefore, photocatalytic H2 evolution is a potential research field [5][6][7][8][9]. To date, many semiconductors such as metal selenides [10][11][12][13][14], metal sulfides [15][16][17][18][19], carbon nitrides [20,21], and metal oxides [22][23][24][25][26] have been reported for photocatalytic H2 production. It is worth noting that CdS is widely studied owing to its suitable band gap (about 2.4 eV) and band edge, which result in the material exhibiting good performances under visible light irradiation.…”

Molybdenum-Containing Metalloenzymes and Synthetic Catalysts for Conversion of Small Molecules

“…EMIM-BF 4 electrolyte was shown to increase selectivity for CO product from CO 2 reduction [59]. Salehi-Khojin and coworkers reported that the use of a hybrid electrolyte of choline chloride/KOH was also effective to improve the CO 2 reduction selectivity of the MoS 2 electrode [67]. Using the choline chloride/KCl buffer instead of EMIM-BF 4 afforded 1.5 times higher current density at −0.25 V vs. RHE.…”