Accelerating solar driven CO_(2) reduction via sulfur-doping boosted water dissociation and proton transfer

Exploring efficient photocatalysts for solar driven CO_(2) reduction with water(H_(2)O)as a proton donor is highly imperative but remains a great challenge because the synchronous enhancement of CO_(2) activation,H_(2)O dissociation and proton transfer is hardly achieved on a photocatalyst.Particularly,the sluggish H_(2)O dissociation impedes the photocatalytic CO_(2) reduction reaction involving multiple proton–electron coupling transfer processes.Herein,a sulfur-doped BiOCl(S-BiOCl)photocatalyst with abundant oxygen vacancies(OV)is developed,which exhibits broadband-light harvesting across solar spectrum and distinct photothermal effect due to photochromism.For photocatalytic CO_(2) reduction with H_(2)O in a gas–solid system,the high CO yield of 49.76μmol·g_(cat)^(-1)·h^(-1) with 100%selectivity is achieved over the S-BiOCl catalyst under a simulated sunlight.The H_(2)O-assisted CO_(2) reduction reaction on S-BiOCl catalyst is triggered by photocatalysis and the photothermal heating further enhances the reaction rate.The kinetic isotope experiments indicate that the sluggish H_(2)O dissociation affects the whole photocatalytic CO_(2) reduction process.The presence of oxygen vacancies promotes the adsorption and activation of H_(2)O and CO_(2),and the doped S sites play a crucial role in boosting H_(2)O dissociation and accelerating the dynamic migration of hydrogen species.As a result,the ingenious integration of OV defects,S sites and photothermal effect in S-BiOCl catalyst conjointly contributes to the significant improvement in photocatalytic CO_(2) reduction performance.