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Amorphous NH2-MIL-68 as an efficient electro- and photo-catalyst for CO2 conversion reactions

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Abstract

To produce metal-organic framework (MOF) catalysts with both high activity and durability is interesting but challenging. We report an amorphous MOF (NH2-MIL-68), which combines the advantages of (1) a large number of open metal sites, (2) the basic building blocks and connectivity of crystalline NH2-MIL-68, and (3) hierarchically meso- and microporous structure. It exhibits high performances in electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 and photochemical cycloaddition of CO2 under mild conditions. For the former reaction, the maximum Faradaic efficiency for product formic acid (FEHCOOH) reaches 93.3% with a current density of 34.2 mA·cm−2 at −2.05 V vs. Ag/Ag+ catalyzed by amorphous NH2-MIL-68, while the crystalline NH2-MIL-68 shows FEHCOOH of 67.7% with considerable productions of CO and H2 at the same experimental conditions. For the photochemical cycloaddition of CO2 with styrene oxide, the yield by amorphous NH2-MIL-68 can reach 94.1% at 12 h, which is higher than the reported value under similar conditions. The structure—efficiency relationship of the catalyst for the two reactions was investigated. This work opens up new possibility for designing high-performance MOF and MOF-based catalysts.

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Acknowledgements

This research was made possible as a result of a generous grant from Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2017YFA0403003) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22033009).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, CAS Key Laboratory of Colloid, Interface and Chemical Thermodynamics, CAS Research/Education Center for Excellence in Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Lifei Liu, Jianling Zhang, Xiuyan Cheng, Mingzhao Xu, Xinchen Kang, Qiang Wan, Buxing Han & Ningning Wu

  2. School of Chemical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Lifei Liu, Jianling Zhang, Xiuyan Cheng, Mingzhao Xu, Xinchen Kang, Qiang Wan, Buxing Han & Ningning Wu

  3. Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility (BSRF), Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Lirong Zheng & Chenyan Ma

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  1. Lifei Liu
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Correspondence to Jianling Zhang.

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Liu, L., Zhang, J., Cheng, X. et al. Amorphous NH2-MIL-68 as an efficient electro- and photo-catalyst for CO2 conversion reactions. Nano Res. 16, 181–188 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4664-0

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