Photocatalytic non-oxidative coupling of methane: Recent progress and future

The importance of effectively converting methane to hydrogen and high value-added hydrocarbons chemicals is becoming more significant due to the huge resources of methane and increasing demands for chemicals. However, it is hard to convert methane into more useful hydrocarbons and hydrogen due to the enormous thermodynamic barrier, which often needs high energy and often results in catalyst deactivation and unsatisfactory product selectivity. Recently, a growing number of researches focusing on photocatalytic methane conversion under mild conditions have attracted much attention, demonstrating that photocatalytic non-oxidative coupling of methane (PNOCM) is a prospective and green method for methane conversion under mild conditions. Herein, we provide a review of the recent advance, remaining challenges, and prospects in PNOCM. Moreover, this review provides considerable guidance for rational design of efficient and stable photocatalysts towards PNOCM by theory predictions and experiment results. We hope this review can attract more attention to the important research field of energy conversion.