Photocatalytic CO₂ reduction using La-Ni bimetallic sites within a covalent organic framework

The precise construction of photocatalysts with diatomic sites that simultaneously foster light absorption and catalytic activity is a formidable challenge, as both processes follow distinct pathways. Herein, an electrostatically driven self-assembly approach is used, where phenanthroline is used to synthesize bifunctional LaNi sites within covalent organic framework. The La and Ni site acts as optically and catalytically active center for photocarriers generation and highly selective CO₂-to-CO reduction, respectively. Theory calculations and in-situ characterization reveal the directional charge transfer between La-Ni double-atomic sites, leading to decreased reaction energy barriers of *COOH intermediate and enhanced CO₂-to-CO conversion. As a result, without any additional photosensitizers, a 15.2 times enhancement of the CO₂ reduction rate (605.8 µmol·g⁻¹h⁻¹) over that of a benchmark covalent organic framework colloid (39.9 µmol·g⁻¹h⁻¹) and improved CO selectivity (98.2%) are achieved. This work presents a potential strategy for integrating optically and catalytically active centers to enhance photocatalytic CO₂ reduction.

Min Zhou, Zhiqing Wang, Aohan Mei, Zifan Yang, Wen Chen, Siyong Ou, Shengyao Wang, Keqiang Chen, Peter Reiss, Kun Qi, Jingyuan Ma, Yueli Liu