Boosted Solar Thermochemical Low‐Temperature CO₂ Splitting On Pt/CeO₂ by Interface Catalysis

Solar thermochemical CO₂ 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 CO₂ splitting at low temperature (<800 °C) due to insufficient activation of metal oxides for CO₂. Herein, the introduction of a small amount of Pt was found to be able to greatly increase the performance of CO₂ splitting with the highest peak CO production rate of about 65 mL min^-1 g^-1, CO productivity of about 53 mL g^-1, nearly 100 % CO₂ conversion and long-term stability for 0.5Pt/CeO₂, 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 (Pt⁰-O_v-Ce³⁺) after CH₄ reduction, which improved CO₂ activation and dissociation due to beneficial breakage of C=O bond by the cooperation of Pt⁰ and oxygen vacancies in the interface.