Tailoring Crystal Facets of Metal-Organic Layers to Enhance Photocatalytic Activity for CO2 Reduction

Abstract

It is common that different crystal facets in metal and metal oxide nanocrystals display different catalytic performances, whereas such phenomena have been rarely documented in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Herein, we demonstrate for the first time that a nickel metal-organic layer (MOL) exposing rich (100) crystal facets (Ni-MOL-100) shows a much higher photocatalytic CO₂ -to-CO activity than the one exposing rich (010) crystal facets (Ni-MOL-010) and its bulky counterpart (bulky Ni-MOF), with a catalytic activity up to 2.5 and 4.6 times more active than Ni-MOL-010 and bulky Ni-MOF, respectively. Theoretical studies reveal that the two coordinatively unsaturated Ni^II ions with a close distance of 3.50 Å on the surface of Ni-MOL-100 enables synergistic catalysis, leading to more favorable energetics in CO₂ reduction than that of Ni-MOL-010.

Keywords: crystal engineering; crystal facet tuning; heterogeneous catalysis; metal-organic layers; photocatalytic CO2 reduction.