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  • Renewable formate from sunl...
    Pan, Yuyang; Zhang, Huiyan; Zhang, Bowen; Gong, Feng; Feng, Jianyong; Huang, Huiting; Vanka, Srinivas; Fan, Ronglei; Cao, Qi; Shen, Mingrong; Li, Zhaosheng; Zou, Zhigang; Xiao, Rui; Chu, Sheng

    Nature communications, 02/2023, Volume: 14, Issue: 1
    Journal Article

    The sustainable production of chemicals and fuels from abundant solar energy and renewable carbon sources provides a promising route to reduce climate-changing CO emissions and our dependence on fossil resources. Here, we demonstrate solar-powered formate production from readily available biomass wastes and CO feedstocks via photoelectrochemistry. Non-precious NiOOH/α-Fe O and Bi/GaN/Si wafer were used as photoanode and photocathode, respectively. Concurrent photoanodic biomass oxidation and photocathodic CO reduction towards formate with high Faradaic efficiencies over 85% were achieved at both photoelectrodes. The integrated biomass-CO photoelectrolysis system reduces the cell voltage by 32% due to the thermodynamically favorable biomass oxidation over conventional water oxidation. Moreover, we show solar-driven formate production with a record-high yield of 23.3 μmol cm h as well as high robustness using the hybrid photoelectrode system. The present work opens opportunities for sustainable chemical and fuel production using abundant and renewable resources on earth-sunlight, biomass and CO .