Significant stability enhancement in photocatalytic CO<sub>2</sub> reduction via flow-driven strategies.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41851111.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-70542-9.
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Abstract
Achieving long-term stability remains a major challenge in photocatalytic CO<sub>2</sub> reduction. Unlike natural photosynthesis, most artificial systems exhibit severe activity losses within hours due to catalyst deactivation and surface degradation. This study investigates the effect of continuous CO<sub>2</sub> and H<sub>2</sub>O flow during the photocatalytic process. Under optimized flow conditions, widely used photocatalysts such as TiO<sub>2</sub>, ZnO, CdS, and C<sub>3</sub>N<sub>4</sub> show up to 50-fold improvement in operational stability, with TiO<sub>2</sub> retaining 80% of its initial activity over 15 days. CO<sub>2</sub> flow plays a more dominant role than H<sub>2</sub>O flow, mitigating product accumulation and preventing catalyst deactivation. Surface and structural analyses reveal that systems without flows suffer from product and intermediate accumulation, while flow-enabled systems maintain clean catalytic surfaces. X-ray absorption spectroscopy confirms the suppression of structural degradation under flow. Here, we establish flow control as a design principle for durable photocatalytic CO<sub>2</sub> reduction, providing a pathway for scalable solar-to-chemical energy conversion.