Selective Photoelectrochemical Oxidation of Glycerol to Glyceric Acid on (002) Facets Exposed WO<sub>3</sub> Nanosheets
Yonghao Xiao, Mengran Wang, Dong Liu, Jiajian Gao, Jie Ding, Huan Wang, Hong Bin Yang, Fuhua Li, Mengxin Chen, Yangsen Xu, Danyun Xu, Yunxiao Zhang, Shaofan Fang, Xin Ao, Jingyu Wang, Chenliang Su, Bin Liu
Abstract
Abstract Glycerol is a byproduct of biodiesel production. Selective photoelectrochemical oxidation of glycerol to high value‐added chemicals offers an economical and sustainable approach to transform renewable feedstock as well as store green energy at the same time. In this work, we synthesized monoclinic WO 3 nanosheets with exposed (002) facets, which could selectively oxidize glycerol to glyceric acid (GLYA) with a photocurrent density of 1.7 mA cm −2 , a 73 % GLYA selectivity and a 39 % GLYA Faradaic efficiency at 0.9 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) under AM 1.5G illumination (100 mW cm −2 ). Compared to (200) facets exposed WO 3 , a combination of experiments and theoretical calculations indicates that the superior performance of selective glycerol oxidation mainly originates from the better charge separation and prolonged carrier lifetime resulted from the plenty of surface trapping states, lower energy barrier of the glycerol‐to‐GLYA reaction pathway, more abundant active sites and stronger oxidative ability of photogenerated holes on the (002) facets exposed WO 3 . Our findings show great potential to significantly contribute to the sustainable and environmentally friendly chemical processes via designing high performance photoelectrochemical cell via facet engineering for renewable feedstock transformation.