Abstract
Solar-driven conversion of CO2 and H2O into chemicals is a promising strategy, while achieving simultaneous and efficient CO2 reduction and H2O oxidation remains challenging. Here, inspired by the role of plastoquinone in temporarily storing electrons during natural photosynthesis, we design a silver-modified tungsten trioxide (Ag/WO3) that functions as a charge reservoir through reversible W6+/W5+ transitions under irradiation. When coupled with various active components, Ag/WO3 significantly enhances their CO2 conversion performance, indicating the universality of this strategy. Specifically, coupling Ag/WO3 with cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc), the CoPc/Ag/WO3 catalyst achieves a CO production rate of ~1.5 mmol gCoPc−1 h−1, representing a 100-fold enhancement over pure CoPc. Mechanistic studies reveal that electrons stored in Ag/WO3 efficiently scavenge photogenerated holes from CoPc, thereby maintaining a high electron density at CO2 reduction sites of CoPc. This work establishes a bioinspired charge reservoir strategy for efficient CO2 photoreduction, providing a universal approach to solar fuel production.
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Source data are provided in this paper. Data are available from the corresponding authors upon request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 42507620), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant Number 2025M771270, and the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF under Grant Number GZB20250102 for X.S. It was also supported by the Youth Cross Team Scientific Research Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant Number JCTD-2022-17) and the Key Project of the State Key Laboratory of Loess Science (Grant Number SKLLQGZD2503) for Y.H., and by the One Hundred Person Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant Number E5550201) for H.Z.
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Y.H. supervised the project. Y.H. and X.S. conceived and designed the experiments. Y.H., X.S. and H.Z. performed the key experiments and analyzed the results. Y.H., X.S. J.C. and S.L. discussed the data. Y.H, X.S. and H.Z. wrote and revised the manuscript.
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Huang, Y., Shi, X., Zhang, H. et al. Bioinspired charge reservoir enables efficient CO2 photoreduction with H2O via tungsten valence oscillation. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68991-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68991-3
