Recently, Dr. Liu Tian, Associate Research Scientist of the Environmental Materials Research Team of SIAR, USTC, published a research paper entitled "A general interfacial-energetics-tuning strategy for enhanced artificial photosynthesis" on Nature Communications.

As an important chemical raw material, H2O2 plays an important role in the fields of energy, environment, and medical treatment. However, traditional synthesis methods result in high energy consumption, high cost and potential safety hazards. The photochemical synthesis of H2O2 from water and oxygen is considered to be a low-carbon, safe and green synthesis method, but the existing photocatalytic systems generally suffer from the low separation efficiency of semiconductor photogenerated electron-hole pairs and poor reaction selectivity, resulting in a low yield of H2O2 that cannot meet the needs of industrial applications. Dr. Liu Tian used crystallized BiVO4 as a photocatalyst, Ag/Pd core/shell structure nanoparticles and CoOx as cocatalysts to construct a new type of all-inorganic composite nanophotocatalysts to achieve precise tuning of the surface energetics for enhancing charge separation and performance in photosynthesis systems. Ag/Pd and CoOx nanoparticles are selectively deposited on the {010} and {110} facets of BiVO4, respectively, as the surface reaction sites for generating H2O2 and trapped holes, respectively. With successful tuning of interfacial energetics, BiVO4 generated H2O2 with an AQY of 3.0% and a STH efficiency of 0.73% at full spectrum, a new record for inorganic semiconductor-based systems.

Dr. Liu Tian is the first author of this paper, Zhejiang University is the first affiliation, and SIAR, USTC is the joint affiliation of this paper.

Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35502-z