InGaN nanostructures supported rhodium nanoclusters for green syngas production from CO2 and H2O powered by sunlight

Solar-powered syngas production via methane steam reforming presents a revolutionary strategy for producing transportable liquid fuel and chemical commodities. Simultaneous activation of CH
4
and H
2
O is the key for achieving high performance solar-fuel production such as syngas. However, it has remained challenging to efficiently reform CH
4
. In this work, one-dimensional nanostructured InGaN-supported Rh species vertically aligned is assembled for green syngas production with the only inputs of CH
4
, H
2
O, and sunlight. On the basis of density functional theory (DFT) calculations, in combination with state-of-the-art in situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier-transform spectroscopy and electron magnetic resonance spectroscopy characterization, it is revealed that that the wurtzite GaN is synergistic with ultrafine Rh nanoparticles (NPs) for deforming the symmetrical tetrahedral configuration of CH
4
and for dissociating the O-H bond of H
2
O (Fig. 1). Consequently, the assembled architecture of Rh NPs/GaN NWs illustrates exceptional syngas activity of 5.0 mol•g
cat
-
¹
•h
^-1
, with a benchmarking turnover frequency of 3200 mol CO+H
2
per mol Rh species per hour. It I s worthwhile mentioning that engineering the components of this rational architecture, the ratio of CO/H
2
can be flexibly varied from 1.2 to 2.3 for meeting the practical demand of high-value downstream products.