Recently, Professor Xiong Yujie of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), and his group cooperated with a number of the USTC professors to design a class of defect-rich tungsten oxide nanosheet, this kind of new photocatalytic material exhibits excellent aerobic coupled catalytic performance under broad spectrum light conditions, and is expected to achieve low power consumption and low cost of chemical production. It is reported that the defect-rich tungsten trioxide nanosheets have precisely controllable oxygen vacancies, and promote the efficient transfer of photogenerated electrons from the oxide catalyst to oxygen molecules; at the same time, the emergence of defect states significantly broaden the photocatalyst absorbance range to capture solar energy in the wide spectral range of visible and near infrared region. The achievement of Professor Xiong Yujie group achieved effectively capture and conversion of solar energy to pass to solve the bottleneck problem in the oxide catalyst photocatalytic organic synthesis, and make the possibility for the use of solar energy replacing thermal in organic synthesis.

Metal oxide (tungsten trioxide ect.) has the advantages of low cost, and exhibits a photocatalytic activity, which is a class of ideal catalytic materials. The key step of semiconductor photocatalysis is in the photocatalyst excitation, the migration of photo-generated electrons and holes, the recombination of electrons and holes in the catalyst or on the surface. Low quantum efficiency of photocatalytic reaction is the most critical factor which makes the photocatalyst difficult to practical use. The core of Professor Xiong yuJie group developed defect-rich tungsten trioxide photocatalyst nanosheet lies in how to reduce cost of catalyst material and improve the efficiency of energy conversion.

 

At present, doping or semiconductor composite is usually used to reduce costs and to improve catalytic efficiency of tungsten trioxide photocatalyst, such as tungsten trioxide as a carrier after loading the precious metals (e.g. Pt, Au, etc.), it will show strong oxidizing in the presence of water and oxygen thus to help organic synthesis with high reactivity; titanium dioxide and tungsten trioxide complex semiconductor to improve the photocatalytic activity.