Semiconductor-Based, Solar-Driven Photochemical Cells for Fuel Generation from Carbon Dioxide in Aqueous Solutions.

There has been active interest to identify new methods to reduce CO2 into usable fuel sources. In this work, we demonstrate two types of photo-electrochemical cells (PECs) that photoreduce CO2 directly to formate in aqueous solutions both in the presence and absence of external bias or additional electron sources. The photocathodes were either a CuFeO2 /CuO electrode or a bilayer of CdTe on NiO, whereas the photoanode was a bilayer of NiOx on CdS. The PECs were characterized by using both electrochemistry and spectroscopy, and the products formed from CO2 reduction were characterized and quantified by using 1 H NMR spectroscopy and ESI-MS. In addition, an organohydride catalyst was tested in conjunction with the PECs, which not only showed a significant gain of 85 times in CO2 reduction (27 μm formate without the catalyst, 2.3 mm formate with it) compared to the NiO/CdTe photocathode system but could also generate methanol under an external bias (10 μm).