2025-09-05 中国科学院（CAS）
＜関連情報＞
- https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/research_news/chem/202508/t20250801_1048928.shtml
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq3445
光化学的H₂解離によるほぼ定量的なCO₂からエチレンへの還元 Photochemical H2 dissociation for nearly quantitative CO2 reduction to ethylene
Ping Jin, Pu Guo, Nengchao Luo, Hui Zhang, […] , and Feng Wang
Science Published:4 Sep 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adq3445
Editor’s summary
Climate change concerns have prompted research into replacing fossil fuel feedstocks with carbon dioxide to produce commodity chemicals such as ethylene. Jin et al. now report a two-step procedure using near-ultraviolet light that first reduces the carbon dioxide to ethane and then uses a previously reported photocatalyst to oxidize the ethane to ethylene (see the Perspective by Cortés). The first step relies on a gold-titania catalyst that appears to activate hydrogen heterolytically upon photoirradiation, leading to highly selective reductive coupling of carbon dioxide. —Jake S. Yeston
Abstract
Producing olefins by carbon dioxide (CO2) hydrogenation is a long-standing goal. The usual products are multicarbon mixtures because the critical step of heterolytic hydrogen (H2) dissociation at high temperatures complicates selectivity control. In this study, we report that irradiating gold–titanium dioxide at 365 nanometers induces heterolytic H2 dissociation at ambient temperature. This process likely relies on interfacial electric dipoles from photogenerated electrons and holes situated on the metallic gold nanoparticles and interfacial gold–oxygen–titanium scaffolds. The heterolytic H2 dissociation is further promoted by light-induced coating of gold nanoparticles with a titanium oxide layer. The resulting nucleophilic hydrogen species reduce CO2 to ethane in >99% yield under light irradiation in a flow apparatus. Furthermore, cascading with a subsequent photocatalytic ethane dehydrogenation generates ethylene in >99% yield over 1500 hours of irradiation.
