Photoelectrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide to methanol on p-type CuFe2O4 under visible light irradiation

Abstract Artificial photosynthesis has the potential to produce solar fuels from CO 2 and H 2 O using an efficient photocatalyst. Semiconductor with low band gap and high stability is always the right candidate to be used as photocatalyst. Photocatalytic (PC) reduction of CO 2 suffers from slow reaction kinetics and poor yield of product. Photocatalytic reaction in assistance with judicious bias potential is a solution to increase the catalytic activity and reduce the electron/hole (e − /h + ) recombination rate. In the present work, a p -type CuFe 2 O 4 was synthesized and used for photoelectrochemical (PEC) CO 2 reduction. The catalyst was characterized by UV-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), Mott-Schottky (MS), chronoamperometry, X-Ray powder diffraction (XRD), X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Methanol was found as only product in liquid phase produced by photoelectrochemical reduction of CO 2 at a bias potential of −0.5 V (vs NHE) under light irradiation (at 470 nm). The quantum efficiency and incident photon to current efficiency (IPCE) were found as 14.4% and 5.1% respectively revealed that, CuFe 2 O 4 is a potential photocathode for PEC of CO 2 reduction.