Cocatalysts in photocatalytic methane conversion: recent achievements and prospects

Photocatalysis, which performed under mild conditions by utilizing solar energy, has become a desirable technology to convert methane into highly valuable chemicals, such as methanol, ethane, and other hydrocarbons. However, pristine photocatalysts still suffer from the low utilization efficiency of solar light and the high recombination rate of photogenerated charge carriers, which exhibit the low activity and selectivity for photocatalytic methane conversion. Loading cocatalysts on photocatalysts is an attractive strategy to manipulate the products’ yield and selectivity of photocatalytic methane conversion due to the enhanced charge carrier separation efficiency, extended light absorption and promoted reactant adsorption/desorption kinetics. This review discusses the recent achievements of the cocatalysts for photocatalytic methane conversion reactions. Moreover, the challenges and perspectives for the development of efficient cocatalysts are presented. This review provides considerable guidelines for the design and construction of efficient cocatalysts for photocatalytic methane conversion reactions.