How defects affect photocatalysis
Photocatalytic CO₂ reduction involves light absorption, charge transfer and surface reactions. Defects in a catalyst can influence each of these processes. A review co-authored by Yanling Han, Yuanyuan Liu and colleagues surveys the main defect types, methods used to create them and recent research on their application to photocatalytic CO₂ reduction.
The article examines how defects affect electronic structure, energy bands and active sites. It connects these effects with CO₂ adsorption and activation and with charge-carrier recombination to discuss how different approaches work. It also considers technical limitations, scientific questions and directions for further research.
Paper and contributors
The review was published online in Langmuir on 30 April 2026 and appeared in Volume 42, Issue 18, dated 12 May 2026. Yanling Han and Jiari He are co-first authors. Yuanyuan Liu is among the corresponding authors, and Peng Wang is a co-author.
The paper is titled “Recent Development of Defect Engineering in Photocatalytic CO₂ Reduction”. See the ACS publication page for publication details and the complete author list. DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.6c00088.