Recently, Associate Professor Zhu Xianglin and Professor Xu Hui's team published the research paper of "Supercharged CO₂ Photothermal catalytic Methanation: High Conversion, Rate, and Selectivity " in the Journal of Angewandte Chemie International Edition (DOI: 10.1002/anie.202218694). Jiangsu University is the first unit of completion, and Dr. Xianglin Zhu is the first author of the paper.

In the face of serious climate problems caused by excessive CO₂ emission, it has become a global consensus to promote large-scale CO₂ capture and conversion. Using CO₂ as a feedstock to produce high-value chemicals such as methane, syngas and other hydrocarbons is relevant to achieving carbon neutrality. In recent years, the CO₂ hydrogenation process represented by the Sabatier reaction has attracted extensive attention from researchers. However, due to the thermodynamic and kinetic bottlenecks of the Sabatier CO₂ methanation reaction, the reaction is usually carried out at a high temperature in order to obtain the conversion, rate and selectivity that are feasible in industry. In this paper, Ni metal-modified boron nitride photothermal catalysts are reported for photothermal CO₂ methanation. The adsorption and activation of CO₂ molecules can be achieved by the in-situ generated HOB⋅ B Frustrated Lewis acid-base pairs. Thus, 87.68% CO₂ conversion and 2.03 mol g^-1h^-1 product generation efficiency can be achieved under atmospheric pressure, and the selectivity are close to 100%. This work provides an important reference for the design of efficient light-driven Sabatier reaction catalysts.

In recent years, the Institute for Energy Research has closely followed the national carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and focused on the frontier research fields of CO₂ photocatalytic, electric and thermal conversion. It has been approved more than 10 key projects and surface projects of the National Natural Science Foundation. It has established and deepened international cooperation with well-known universities such as the University of Toronto and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and published more than 100 high-quality papers. In the domestic peer field has a certain impact.

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Link to article: https://doi.org/ 10.1002/anie.202218694.