Facile polyol-triggered anatase-rutile heterophase TiO nanoparticles for enhancing photocatalytic CO reduction.

Solar-driven CO photoreduction into fuels has great potential in addressing the environmental and energy crisis. Heterophase TiO has attracted increasing attention in photoenergy applications owing to its fascinating properties, but much more attention has been paid on photodegradation and photocatalytic water splitting than that of photocatalytic CO reduction. Herein, anatase-rutile heterophase TiO nanoparticles with oxygen vacancy (TiO) were successfully synthesized by involving proper amounts of polyols (EG, DEG, TEG, etc.) into the reaction system. The heterophase TiO nanoparticles could accelerate the electron-hole separation and exhibit superior photocatalytic activity for reducing CO into methane. This work offers an alternative approach to simply fabricate TiO-based heterophase photocatalyst towards efficient CO photoreduction.