Surface chemical grafting of two-dimensional MoSxSey for the adsorption and activation of CO2 in visible-light photoreduction

Abstract

The adsorption and activation of CO₂ are two essential steps during the photocatalytic reduction of CO₂. However, CO₂ molecules, being non-polar and linear, are thermodynamically too stable to be activated. In this work, we graft aromatic amine molecules to the surface of two-dimensional MoS_xSe_y to improve its photocatalytic efficiency. Thus, the photongenerated electrons would swiftly transfer from MoS_xSe_y to the grafted molecules under the excitation of the visible light, which conducts strong interaction with CO₂ to promote its adsorption. In addition, MoS_xSe_y with grafted aromatic amine molecules exhibited strong reduction ability to trigger the activation of adsorbed CO₂, and to facilitate the consequent deoxidization and hydrogenation, significantly improving the final production. The proposed grafting of aromatic amine molecules could be a promising strategy for effectively activating CO₂ photoreduction.