Boosted Solar Thermochemical Low-Temperature CO Splitting On Pt/CeO by Interface Catalysis.

Solar thermochemical CO splitting using metal oxides is considered as a promising approach to produce solar fuels since it is capable to tap abundant sunlight directly and store solar energy in the renewable fuel. It remains a grand challenge to achieve highly efficient CO splitting at low temperature (<800 °C) due to insufficient activation of metal oxides for CO. Herein, the introduction of a small amount of Pt was found to be able to greatly increase the performance of CO splitting with the highest peak CO production rate of about 65 mL min g, CO productivity of about 53 mL g, nearly 100 % CO conversion and long-term stability for 0.5Pt/CeO, which exceeded most of the state-of-the-art transition metals-based oxides even at lower temperature (700 °C). This could be attributed to the addition of Pt leading to the formation of an interface (Pt-O-Ce) after CH reduction, which improved CO activation and dissociation due to beneficial breakage of C=O bond by the cooperation of Pt and oxygen vacancies in the interface.