Biomass-derived metal–organic hybrids for CO2 transformation under ambient conditions

Abstract

The fabrication of catalysts that can activate CO₂ under ambient conditions is very interesting but challenging. Metal–organic hybrids (MOHs) have promising applications in catalysis, and their fabrication from renewable resources is very attractive. Herein, we report a simple protocol to fabricate metal–organic hybrids (MOHs) from chitosan, phytic acid and ZnCl₂, obtaining mesoporous MOH-Zn possessing –OH, –NH₂, and –PO₄ groups. The resulting MOH-Zn shows excellent activity for CO₂ activation and enables the cyclization of epoxides with CO₂ to proceed under ambient conditions, affording a high turnover frequency of 7.8 h⁻¹. The high performance of MOH-Zn originates from the synergistic effects among multi-functional sites in the catalysts.