Artificial photosynthesis in carbon dioxide (CO₂) conversion into value-added chemicals attracts considerable attention but suffers from the low activity induced by sluggish separation of photogenerated carriers and the kinetic bottleneck-induced unsatisfied selectivity. Herein, we prepare a new-style Bi/TiO₂ catalyst formed by pinning bismuth clusters on TiO₂ nanowires through being confined by pores, which exhibits high activity and selectivity towards photocatalytic production of CH₄ from CO₂. Boosted charge transfer from TiO₂ through Bi to the reactants is revealed via in situ X-ray photon spectroscopy and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL). Further, in situ Fourier transform infrared results confirm that Bi/TiO₂ not only overcomes the multi-electron kinetics challenge of CO₂ to CH₄ via boosting charge transfer, but also facilitates proton production and transfer as well as the intermediates *CHO and *CH₃O generation, ultimately achieving the tandem catalysis towards methanation. Theoretical calculation also underlies that the more favorable reaction step from *CO to *CHO on Bi/TiO₂ results in CH₄ production with higher selectivity. Our work brings new insights into rational design of photocatalysts with high performance and the formation mechanism of CO₂ to CH₄ for solar energy storage in future.

A recent discovery of high-performance Mg₃Sb₂ has ignited tremendous research activities in searching for novel Zintl-phase compounds as promising thermoelectric materials. Herein, a series of planar Zintl-phase XCuSb (X = Ca, Sr, Ba) thermoelectric materials are developed by vacuum induction melting. All these compounds exhibit high carrier mobilities and intrinsic low lattice thermal conductivities (below 1 W·m⁻¹·K⁻¹ at 1010 K), resulting in peak p-type zT values of 0.14, 0.30, and 0.48 for CaCuSb, SrCuSb, and BaCuSb, respectively. By using BaCuSb as a prototypical example, the origins of low lattice thermal conductivity are attributed to the strong interlayer vibrational anharmonicity of Cu–Sb honeycomb sublattice. Moreover, the first-principles calculations reveal that n-type BaCuSb can achieve superior thermoelectric performance with the peak zT beyond 1.1 because of larger conducting band degeneracy. This work sheds light on the high-temperature thermoelectric potential of planar Zintl compounds, thereby stimulating intense interest in the investigation of this unexplored material family for higher zT values.

Achieving high thermoelectric performance in thin film heterostructures is essential for integrated and miniatured thermoelectric device applications. In this work, we demonstrate a mechanism and device performance of enhanced thermoelectric performance induced by interfacial effect in a transition metal dichalcogenides-SrTiO₃ (STO) heterostructure. Owing to the formed conductive interface and elevated conductivity, the ZrTe₂/STO heterostructure presents large thermoelectric power factor of 3.7 × 10⁵ μWcm⁻¹K⁻² at 10 K. Formation of quasi-two-dimensional conductance at the interface is attributed for the large Seebeck coefficient and high electrical conductivity, leading to high thermoelectric performance which is demonstrated by a prototype device attaining 3 K cooling with 100 mA current input to this heterostructure. This superior thermoelectric property makes this heterostructure a promising candidate for future thermoelectric device.