Low-Temperature Synthesis of Mesoporous Half-Metallic High-Entropy Spinel Oxide Nanofibers for Photocatalytic CO<sub>2</sub> Reduction
Liang Zhang, Shuhui Xia, Xiaohua Zhang, Yonggang Yao, Yuanyuan Zhang, Shuo Chen, Yuehui Chen, Jianhua Yan
Abstract
High-entropy oxides (HEOs) exhibit great prospects owing to their varied composition, chemical adaptability, adjustable light-absorption ability, and strong stability. In this study, we report a strategy to synthesize a series of porous high-entropy spinel oxide (HESO) nanofibers (NFs) at a low temperature of 400 °C by a sol–gel electrospinning technique. The key lies in selecting six acetylacetonate salt precursors with similar coordination abilities, maintaining a high-entropy disordered state during the transformation from stable sols to gel NFs. The as-synthesized HESO NFs of (NiCuMnCoZnFe) 3 O 4 show a high specific surface area of 66.48 m 2 /g, a diverse elemental composition, a dual bandgap, half-metallicity property, and abundant defects. The diverse elements provide various synergistic catalytic sites, and oxygen vacancies act as active sites for electron–hole separation, while the half-metallicity and dual-bandgap structure offer excellent light absorption ability, thus expanding its applicability to a wide range of photocatalytic processes. As a result, the HESO NFs can efficiently convert CO 2 into CH 4 and CO with high yields of 8.03 and 15.89 μmol g –1 h –1, respectively, without using photosensitizers or sacrificial agents.