Strong Electronic Interaction Enables Enhanced Solar-Driven CO Reduction into Selective CH on SrTiO with Photodeposited Pt Sites.

Targeting selective CO photoreduction into CH remains a challenge due to the sluggish reaction kinetics and poor hydrogenation ability of the unstable intermediate. Here, the active Pt sites were photodeposited on the SrTiO photocatalyst, which was well demonstrated to manipulate the CH product selectivity. The results showed that SrTiO mainly yielded the CO (6.98 μmol g) product with poor CH (0.17 μmol g). With the Pt modification, 100% CH selectivity could be obtained with an optimized yield rate of 8.07 μmol g. The prominent enhancement resulted from the following roles: (1) the strong electronic interaction between the Pt cocatalyst and SrTiO could prompt efficient separation of the photoelectron-hole pairs. (2) The Pt sites were active to capture and activate inert CO into HCO and CO species and allowed fast *COOH formation with the lowered reaction barrier. (3) Compared with SrTiO, the formed *CO species could be captured tightly on the Pt cocatalyst surface for generating the *CH intermediate by the following electron-proton coupling reaction, thus leading to the CH product with 100% selectivity.