Surface chemical grafting of two-dimensional MoSxSey for the adsorption and activation of CO2 in visible-light photoreduction

The adsorption and activation of CO2 are two essential steps during the photocatalytic reduction of CO2. However, CO2 molecules, being non-polar and linear, are thermodynamically too stable to be activated. In this work, we graft aromatic amine molecules to the surface of two-dimensional MoSxSey to improve its photo- catalytic efficiency. Thus, the photongenerated electrons would swiftly transfer from MoSxSey to the grafted molecules under the excitation of the visible light, which conducts strong interaction with CO2 to promote its adsorption. In addition, MoSxSey with grafted aromatic amine molecules exhibited strong reduction ability to trigger the activation of adsorbed CO2, and to facilitate the consequent deoxidization and hydrogenation, significantly improving the final production. The proposed grafting of aromatic amine molecules could be a promising strategy for effectively activating CO2 photoreduction.