Construction of frustrated Lewis pairs on TiO2-x derived from perovskite for enhanced photocatalytic CO2 reduction

Exploring high-efficiency photocatalysts to promote CO2 reduction into high value-added products is of great significance. However, the weak adsorption and activation ability for CO2 hampers the efficiency of photocatalytic CO2 reduction. Herein, hierarchical hollow TiO2-x boxes with frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) are successfully fabricated by in situ topological transformation of perovskite microcubes. The FLPs on TiO2-x surface are constructed with the OVs (Lewis acid sites) and its proximal surface hydroxyls (Lewis base sites). TiO2-x hollow boxes with FLPs show an excellent CO production rate (65.1 μmol g-1h−1) in pure water without any sacrificial agents or cocatalysts, which is 19.1 times and 36.6 times higher than those of TiO2 without FLPs and commercial TiO2 P25, respectively. This work presents a novel strategy to construct FLPs through in situ topological transformation route and also shows great promise for the future design of high-performance CO2 reduction photocatalysts.