Hollow porous photocatalyst improves CO2 to CH4 conversion efficiency, indicating a low-cost route for hydrocarbon fuels.
Poor mass transfer of reactants at the catalytic interface seriously impedes solar‐driven CO 2 conversion, particularly for photocatalysis in pure water without sacrificial reagents, which is detrimental to tackling energy shortages and achieving carbon neutrality. Herein, a hollow porous BiVO 4 @O‐TiN‐TiO 2 nanoantenna arrays (NAs) heterojunction photocatalyst with a photothermal effect is developed for efficient photocatalytic CO 2 methanation. The hollow porous array structure formed after annealing in ammonia and air significantly increases the photocatalysts’ specific surface area and surface temperature, enhancing light absorption, CO 2 molecule mass transfer, and activation on the catalyst surfaces. Benefiting from the collaborative matching of energy and reactants at the catalytic interface, the yields of CO and CH 4 over the hollow porous BiVO 4 @O‐TiN‐TiO 2 NAs photocatalyst reached 175.8 and 373.8 µmol m −2 h −1 (89.5% selectivity) in pure water, which are 1.3 and 21.1 folds higher than that of the BiVO 4 @TiO 2 NAs photocatalyst, respectively. Notably, the low‐cost BiVO 4 @O‐TiN‐TiO 2 NAs photocatalyst achieves a solar‐to‐fuels efficiency of 0.6‰, comparable to catalytic systems using noble metals or sacrificial agents. This work demonstrates the highly selective conversion of CO 2 to CH 4 via enhanced reactant mass transfer and multi‐field (photo‐electric‐thermal) coupling, offering a potential approach for solar‐driven low‐cost synthesis of hydrocarbon fuels.
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Zhao et al. (2025) studied this question.
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