Construction of a red phosphorus-molybdenum dioxide electron-rich interface for efficient photocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide

Developing efficient catalysts to enhance photoreduction carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into hydrocarbon fuels is a great challenge. As metallic material, molybdenum dioxide (MoO 2 ) has very high conductivity and charge density, which make it a promising candidate as photocatalyst. However, its photocatalytic activity is limited by the serious charge recombination. How to effectively make full use of the metallic MoO 2 for photocatalytic CO 2 reduction is still a critical issue. The potential effective way to solve this problem is to introduce appropriate auxiliary catalysts to construct electron-rich interfaces. In this study, red phosphorus (P) is dispersed on MoO 2 nanoparticles to construct electron-rich interfaces which can serve as the active site for photocatalytic CO 2 reduction. The results show that the reduction of CO 2 by pure MoO 2 only produces carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH 4 ). However, with the aid of red P, the P-MoO 2 photocatalyst can produce ethylene (C 2 H 4 ) with the yield of 5.43 μmol h −1 g −1 , and the CO and CH 4 yields are also significantly improved. Experimental results and density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicate that photogenerated carriers can migrate from MoO 2 to the interface, and the reduction of CO 2 occurs at the interface. This study provides a significant insight for the design of efficient photocatalysts by using metallic photocatalysts.