Hijacking the hydrogen atoms in photo-splitting of H2O2 for efficient reduction of CO2 to CH3OH

Abstract

Photo-splitting of H2O2 in visible light is achieved by Cu-MOFs of Cu nodes and 1, 3, 5-benzene tricarboxylic acid (BTC) organic linkers (CuM) decorated with CdS (C) at varying concentrations of CdS in the CuMC composite. This process produces abundant nascent hydrogen atoms to promote the efficient catalytic reduction of CO2 to methanol (CH3OH) in visible light. The slow rate of recombination of the nascent hydrogen atoms produced by the H2O2 photo-splitting on the surface of the CdS quantum dots ensures a high steady-state concentration of hydrogen atoms with significantly reduced production of the less reactive hydrogen gas. With slow recombination of the photo-generated charges and the large surface areas for CO2 adsorption by the MOF, one of the CuMC composites is capable of convertingCO2 into CH3OH with a quantum efficiency approaching 80 %. A mechanism for the selective conversion of CO2 into CH3OH is proposed.