Heterostructure catalyst of Cu-Y 2 O 3 supported on Cu 2 Y 2 O 5 perovskite in solar-driven water gas shift reaction

Water gas shift reaction (WGSR) is one of the important ways to achieve high-quality utilization of syngas. However, thermal catalysis requires a large amount of secondary energy input, which can lead to serious environmental pollution. Therefore, it is necessary to use clean energy sunlight to catalyze solar-driven WGSR to improve the conversion efficiency at lower temperatures. Here, we reported a facile sol–gel synthesis method to prepare Cu 2 Y 2 O 5 perovskite, which was photoactivated by light irradiation in 10 cm to form a heterostructure catalyst of Cu-Y 2 O 3 supported on Cu 2 Y 2 O 5 perovskite. The results showed that the catalyst well exhibited photocatalytic performance (43.7% of CO conversion and about 17 μmol·g cat −1 ·min −1 and 26 μmol·g cat −1 ·min −1 of H 2 and CO 2 production) and stabilized in 19 h in the solar-driven WGSR, while only 27.02% CO conversion can be achieve at about 150 °C on thermal WGSR. The physicochemical characterizations of the samples indicated that Cu 0 and Cu + existed and formed Cu 0 -Cu + interface, which played a critical role in WGSR. Mechanism studies have shown that Cu 2+ of photocatalysts would generate electrons and holes under light irradiation to accelerate the catalytic process of WGSR.