The effects of morphologies on photoreduction of carbon dioxide to gaseous fuel over tin disulfide under visible light irradiation

Abstract Artificial photosynthesis has attracted a lot of attention because it can tackle both global environmental problems and energy crisis. In this paper, SnS2 with different morphologies were synthesized to study their activity and selectivity of photocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2). The size of tablet-like SnS2 is around 80–120 nm while the flower-like SnS2 is composed of nanosheets with a thickness of 10 nm. The reduction products of the as-obtained samples are both CO and CH4. The flower-like SnS2 sample processes more efficacious separation of photogenerated carriers compared to tablet-like SnS2 and shows higher photocatalytic reduction efficiency with CH4 yield of 97.5 μmol g−1, which is approximately 5.7 times higher than that of tablet-like SnS2, while the tablet-like SnS2 shows high selectivity (79%) for CO production. The results reveal that the morphology plays an important role in the activity and selectivity of photocatalytic reduction of CO2 over SnS2.