Synthesis of V-doped In2O3 Nanocrystals via Digestive-Ripening Process and Their Electrocatalytic Properties in CO2 Reduction Reaction

Development of synthetic methods for highly monodisperse nanomaterial is of great importance in nanomaterials related science and technology. The strong demands to prepare exceptionally monodisperse nanocrystals has made the digestive ripening one of the most sought-after size-focusing processes. Although digestive ripening processes have been demonstrated to produce various metals and semiconductors, its applicability to oxides has rarely been studied despite various unique properties and applications of oxide nanomaterials. In this work, we demonstrate successful synthesis of monodisperse V-doped In2O3 nanocrystals via a modified digestive ripening process. The nanocrystals have truncated octahedral shape faceted with eight of the (222) and six of the (220) planes. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the digestive ripening synthesis of highly symmetrical doped oxide nanocrystals. Moreover, V-doped In2O3 nanocrystals exhibit electrocatalytic activities for CO2 electrochemical reduction and prod...