Visible-light-driven CO2 photoreduction over atomically strained indium sites in ambient air

Strain engineering offers an attractive strategy for improving intrinsic catalytic performance of a heterogeneous catalyst. Herein, we successfully create strain into layered indium sulfide (In 2 S 3 ) at atomic scale via introducing oxygen coordination and sulfur vacancy using a wet-chemistry method. The atomically strained In 2 S 3 exhibits greatly enhanced CO 2 photoreduction performance, achieving a CO 2 to CO conversion rate of 5.16 μmol g catalyst −1  h −1 under visible light illumination in ambient air. In-situ spectroscopic measurements together with theoretical calculations indicate that the atomically strained In 2 S 3 features lattice disordered defects on surface, which provides rich uncoordinated catalytic sites and induces structural distortion, resulting in modified band structure that promotes CO 2 adsorption/activation and boosts photogenerated charge carriers’ separation during CO 2 photoreduction. This work provides a new approach for the rational design of atomically strained photocatalysts for CO 2 reduction in ambient air.