Photothermal catalysis represents a clean, efficient, and sustainable approach to harnessing solar energy to drive chemical reactions.
However, the inherent trade-off between mass and heat transport efficiencies
poses significant challenges to its applicability. Herein, a nature-inspired
hollow silica nanocone array catalyst (HSNCA/Co) is developed to address
this limitation by enhancing the heat management and sunlight-absorptive
ability, while maintaining the exposure of active sites. The nanocone array
structure creates dual-flow-rate regions that enable the multidimensional
optimization of thermal management and simultaneous mitigation of all three primary heat dissipation pathways. Moreover, the dense silica array enhances light trapping and plasmon coupling efficacy, achieving nearly 99% broadband absorption. In a CO2 hydrogenation model reaction, this system achieved a CO2 conversion rate of 4427.2 mmol gCo −1 h−1 under intense illumination, achieving one of the highest reported performances among cobalt-based catalysts. This study emphasizes the role of light-to-heat conversion in photothermal catalysis and offers a potential strategy for the design of catalytic materials.