Surface modification and enhanced photocatalytic CO2 reduction performance of TiO2: a review

Recently, the excessive consumption of fossil fuels has caused high emissions of the greenhouse gases, CO2 into atmosphere and global energy crisis. Mimicking the natural photosynthesis by using semiconductor materials to achieve photocatalytic CO2 reduction into valuable solar fuels such as CH4, HCO2H, CH2O, and CH3OH is known as one of the best solutions for addressing the aforementioned issue. Among various proposed photocatalysts, TiO2 has been extensively studied over the past several decades for photocatalytic CO2 reduction because of its cheapness and environmental friendliness. Particularly, surface modification of TiO2 has attracted numerous interests due to its capability of enhancing the light absorption ability, facilitating the electron-hole separation, tuning the CO2 reduction selectivity and increasing the CO2 adsorption and activation ability of TiO2 for photocatalytic CO2 reduction. In this review, recent approaches of the surface modification of TiO2 for photocatalytic CO2 reduction, including impurity doping, metal deposition, alkali modification, heterojunction construction and carbon-based material loading, are presented. The photocatalytic CO2 reduction mechanism and pathways of TiO2 are discussed. The future research direction and perspective of photocatalytic CO2 reduction over surface-modified TiO2 are also presented.