Abstract
Photocatalytic carbon–carbon coupling offers a route for converting plastic-derived chemicals into valuable multi-carbon products, yet uncontrolled coupling of intermediate limits efficiency and selectivity. Here, we report atomically dispersed barium species on titanium dioxide that act as frustrated Lewis pairs, enabling efficient and selective generation intermediates during the co-oxidation of ethylene glycol and methanol toward lactic acid. The barium species create interstitial states near the Fermi level, enhancing charge separation and surface redox activity. Meanwhile, barium sites promote the formation of transient •CHOHCH2OH radicals from ethylene glycol, while lattice O generates stable *CH3 intermediates from methanol. Their directed cross-coupling yields lactic acid at rate of 2.04 ± 0.08 mmol g–1 h–1 with 81.8 ± 2.4 % carbon selectivity, alongside H2 evolution at 5.85 ± 0.23 mmol g–1 h–1. In this work, we show an alkaline-earth frustrated Lewis pairs for selective solar-driven cross-coupling reaction.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the calculation support from the Shuguang Supercomputer Center. The authors acknowledge that some figures in this work were generated using VESTA visualization software. This work was financially supported by Shenzhen Natural Science Foundation (JCYJ20240813160123030), the start-up support from Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 22238013), National Natural Science Foundation Excellent Young Scientist Project, and the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF under Grant GZC20250871.
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Wang, W., Tang, Y., Su, Z. et al. Lactic acid photosynthesis via C–C cross-coupling over atomically dispersed Ba. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73727-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73727-4
