Enhanced carbon dioxide adsorption and carrier separation over amine functionalized zirconium metal organic framework/gold/indium oxide for boosting photocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction.

Photocatalytic CO conversion is a prospective way to mitigate greenhouse effect. InO is widely used in the resource conversion of CO, but still exists a few drawbacks containing limited CO capture and activation, narrow light absorption range, low charge separation and utilization. To overcome these disadvantages, an NH-UiO-66/Au/InO composite photocatalyst is built, with Au nanoparticles and NH-UiO-66 decorated on the surface of InO nanorods. Significantly, the improved carrier separation ability is attributed to the Schottky junction at the Au/InO interface and the heterostructure between InO and NH-UiO-66. And the widened light absorption is attributed to the plasmon effect caused by Au nanoparticles. Moreover, the increase of CO adsorption and activation is mainly due to the porosity of NH-UiO-66, thereby greatly improving photocatalytic CORR efficiency of NH-UiO-66/Au/InO nanorods. The CO yield of NH-UiO-66/Au/InO is 8.56 μmol g h, which is nearly 45 times that of InO. This work will present a novel idea to design high-efficient composite photocatalysts for CO reduction by multifunctional component synergistic enhancement.