Highly Active Photoreduction of Atmospheric-Concentration CO into CHCOOH over Palladium Particles on NbO Nanosheets.

The endeavor to drive CO photoreduction towards the synthesis of C products is largely thwarted by the colossal energy hurdle inherent in C-C coupling. Herein, we load active metal particles on metal oxide nanosheets to build the dual metal pair sites for steering C-C coupling to form C products. Taking Pd particles anchored on the NbO nanosheets as an example, the high-angle annular dark-field image and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrate the presence of Pd-Nb metal pair sites on the Pd-NbO nanosheets. Density functional theory calculations reveal these sites exhibit a low reaction energy barrier of only 1.02 eV for C-C coupling, implying that the introduction of Pd particles effectively tailors the reaction step to form C products. Therefore, the Pd-NbO nanosheets achieve a CHCOOH evolution rate of 13.5 μmol g h in photoreduction of atmospheric-concentration CO, outshining all other single photocatalysts reported to date under analogous conditions.