Electronegative diversity induced localized built-in electric field in a single phased MoSxSeyNz for selectivity-enhanced visible photocatalytic CO2 reduction

How to passivate the recombination in a photocatalyst is a big challenge to achieve efficient photocatalytic CO2 reduction. Besides the heterojunction strategy, the design of intrinsic built-in electric field in a single phased photocatalyst can facilitate the transport while it does not introduce extra side reactions induced by the unbalanced photocarriers. This work utilizes the electronegative diversity between chalcogens and non-chalcogen element in a quarternary transition metal dichalcogenide of MoSxSeyNz to define localized built-in electric fields. It has been revealed that the nitrogen induced intrinsic dipole moments and potential energy have strenghthened the built-in electric fields, promoting the separation of photocarriers and the gathering of electrons around N sites, which has been found to improve the adsorption of intermediate products and lower the energy for methanol-oriented photoproduction route. Finally, the MoSxSeyNz has improved the photoproduction of methanol reduced from CO2 by 162%.