Fabrication of nano copper oxide evenly patched on cubic sodium tantalate for oriented photocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide.

A synthetic process was exploited to fabricate patchy CuO evenly planted on cubic NaTaO for photocatalytically reducing CO in isopropanol. The nano patches of CuO with about 15 nm in size were uniformly distributed on the surface of NaTaO via a phase-transfer protocol and solvothermal synthesis. The crystal phase, morphology, composition, optical absorption and charge separation of as-prepared CuO-NaTaO were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, EDX, XPS, UV-Vis and PL. The results of photocatalytic reduction of CO confirmed that the CuO patched NaTaO possessed better ability to separate charge carriers and selectively reduce CO to methanol than CuO directly loaded NaTaO using the traditional liquid phase reduction procedure after comparing the methanol yields. Furthermore, 5 wt% CuO patched NaTaO led to the highest methanol yield of 1302.22 μmol g h. A redox mechanism was proposed and illustrated in a schematic diagram.