Highly Selective Reduction of Carbon Dioxide to Methane on Novel Mesoporous Rh Catalysts

Mesoporous metals with high surface area hold promise for a variety of catalytic applications, especially for the reduction of CO₂ to value-added products. This study has used a novel mesoporous rhodium (Rh) nanoparticles, which were recently developed via a simple wet chemical reduction approach (Nat. Commun. 2017, 8, 15581) as catalyst for CO₂ methanation. Highly efficient performance and selectivity for methane formation are achieved due to their controllable crystallinity, high porosity, high surface energy, and large number of atomic steps distributions. The mesoporous Rh nanoparticles, possessing the largest surface area (69 m² g^-1), exhibit a substantially higher reaction rate (5.28 × 10^-5 molCO₂ g_Rh^-1 s^-1) than the nonporous Rh nanoparticles (1.28 × 10^-5 molCO₂ g_Rh^-1 s^-1). Our results indicate the extensive use of mesoporous metals in heterogeneous catalysis processes.