Structural Heredity in Catalysis: CO Self-Selective CeO Nanocrystals for Efficient Photothermal CO Hydrogenation to Methane.

The chemical inertness of CO molecules makes their adsorption and activation on a catalyst surface one of the key challenges in recycling CO into chemical fuels. However, the traditional template synthesis and chemical modification strategies used to tackle this problem face severe structural collapse and modifier deactivation issues during the often-needed post-processing procedure. Herein, a CO self-selective hydrothermal growth strategy is proposed for the synthesis of CeO octahedral nanocrystals that participate in strong physicochemical interactions with CO molecules.