Photothermal catalysis for CO₂ convert into C₁–C₃ hydrocarbons by proton conductor BZCY532

Conversion of CO₂ into long-chain hydrocarbons is a potential applications in clean energy research. Here, we exhibit an efficient, stable and readily synthesized photocatalyst for the photocatalytic reduction of CO₂. This is the first time that the proton conductor BZCY 532 as photocatalysts can harvest UV light for multielectron, multiproton reduction of CO₂ to C₁ (methane) , C₂ (ethane), and C₃ (propane) hydrocarbons. Under the photothermal coupling (350 °C + UV) condition, the total yield of CH₄, C₂H₆ and C₃H₈ were 39.13 umol g⁻¹, 8.64 umol g⁻¹ and 3.22 umol g⁻¹ over the course of more than 5 h runs, respectively . The light and temperature attribute influence the selectivity of C₁ and C₂, C₃. In this approach, Ni, Co-doped BZCY532 were also studied and the results show that Ni, Co-doped BZCY532 have higher activity. Ni _0.05 and Co _0.05 obtained the yield of total CH₄, C₂H₆, C₃H₈, which show about 5.6, 9.6, 3.9 and 6.8, 14.2, 6.7 times than BZCY532, respectively. The results proved that doping play a crucial role in improving photocatalytic activity of BZCY532. The formation of multi-carbon compounds maybe the faster proton transfer, which can harvest more electrons from the proton conductor catalysts and promote C–C coupling to form C₂ and C₃. These findings elucidate BZCY-based proton conductor catalyst can be good candidate for the nature of photocatalysis, which involves the stage for the chemical bond formation by light excitation. (paper)