High activity and CH4 selectivity for photocatalytic CO2 reduction by Cu modified C3N4 nanotubes

The photocatalytic CO2 reduction has the problems of low selectivity of single product. Here, the preparation of Cu modified tubular C3N4 (CTN) was studied. The increase of the active site inhibits the recombination of electrons (e-) and holes (h + ) and improves the selectivity of CO2 reduction products. Finally, the CO and CH4 yields of 1.5 % CTN photocatalyst are 11.55 μmol·g−1 and 4.72 μmol·g−1, respectively, which are 5 times higher than that of tubular C3N4 photocatalyst. The selectivity of 2 % CTN to CH4 is up to 68 %, indicating that the prepared CTN photocatalyst has high CO2 reduction activity and CH4 selectivity.