Sustainable Recovery of CO2 by Using Visible-Light-Responsive Crystal Cuprous Oxide/Reduced Graphene Oxide

Abstract

A simple solution-chemistry method has been investigated to prepare crystal cuprous oxide (Cu 2 O) incorporated with reduced graphene oxide (designated as Cu 2 O-rGO-x, where x represents the contents of rGO = 1%, 5% and 10%) in this work. These Cu 2 O-rGO-x composites combine the prospective advantages of rhombic dodecahedra Cu 2 O together with rGO nanosheets which have been studied as visible-light-sensitive catalysts for the photocatalytic production of methanol from CO 2 . Among the Cu 2 O-rGO-x photocatalysts, the methanol yield photocatalyzed by Cu 2 O-rGO-5% can be observed to be 355.26 µmol g −1 cat, which is ca. 36 times higher than that of pristine Cu 2 O nanocrystal in the 20th hour under visible light irradiation. The improved activity may be attributed to the enhanced absorption ability of visible light, the superior separation of electron-hole pairs, well-dispersed Cu 2 O nanocrystals and the increased photostability of Cu 2 O, which are evidenced by employing UV-vis diffuse reflection spectroscopy, photoluminescence, scanning electron microscopy/transmission electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, respectively. This work demonstrates an easy and cost-effective route to prepare non-noble photocatalysts for efficient CO 2 recovery in artificial photosynthesis.

Photocatalytic reduction of graphene oxide with cuprous oxide film under UV-vis irradiation

“…Thus Cu 2 O can absorb visible light at a wavelength of about 400-800 nanometers along with the excitation of electron-hole pair. And it has been widely investigated for photocatalyst reaction under visible light irradiation [21][22][23]31]. Thus Cu 2 O is considered to be a promising visible light active photocatalyst to produce graphene [23].…”

Morphology-Dependent Ullmann C-O Arylation Using Cu2O Nanocrystals

“…In particular, Cu 2 O (Cu I ) micro-and nanocrystals have a wide variety of different structures with well-defined morphologies like cubes, rhombic dodecahedral, octahedron, concave cube, sphere, stars, etc. [15][16][17][18]. It has been reported that Cu 2 O nanocubes were successfully employed in the crosscoupling reaction of aryl halides and phenols [19].…”

Recent trends in photocatalytic materials for reduction of carbon dioxide to methanol

“…The photocatalysts demonstrated higher photo-activity than TiO2 in most cases especially under visible light irradiations. Most of these VLR photocatalysts are metal/non-metal oxides such as WO3, NiO2, In2O3 TaO4, Fe2O3, Bi2O3 etc [33]. Although VLR photocatalysts have reported higher photo-activity and product yield compared to UV sensitive TiO2, selecting/highlighting a material as the best is not accurate as most reported works are carried out under varying reaction and experimental conditions.…”