Different functional group modified zirconium frameworks for the photocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide

Abstract

Conversion of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into useful chemicals is an important and urgent task from the energy and environment perspective. Herein, through a post-synthetic modification (PSM) approach, we synthesized three new metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) UiO-68-PSMs with different functional groups, namely, UiO-68-F, UiO-68-CH₃ and UiO-68-OCH₃, for the photocatalytic reduction of CO₂. By introducing electron-withdrawing and electron-donating groups, UiO-68-PSMs showed different performance for the selective photocatalytic reduction of CO₂ to CO because of change in charge separation and band gap of UiO caused by the presence of different functional groups.