Photoelectrocatalytic Reduction of CO2 to Methanol on Cu2O/CuO Nanoribbons

摘要

In this paper, Cu2O/CuO nanoribbons (NRs) were prepared by simple surface oxidation and electrodeposited methods, and then were utilized for the photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) reduction of CO2. The PEC performance shows that the current density of CO2 reductionobtained from Cu2O/CuO NRs is significant higher than those of Cu2O films and CuO NRs. Besides, the photocurrent transients for Cu2O/CuO NRs in the CO2-saturated electrolyte are 3.5 times higher than that of the electrode in the atmosphere of N2,indicating an excellent PEC performance of as-obtained electrode. The production of methanol from the PEC reduction of CO2 with Cu2O/CuO NRs as catalyst reaches 4.056μg·mL-1 approximately after 6 h, which is larger than that of the sum of the PC andEC reduction of CO2. Consequently, the results indicate that the composite catalyst behaves excellent synergistic effect of the photocatalytic and electrocatalytic reduction of CO2.