On September 9, 2020, Beijing time, Perfectlight Technology's Labsolar-6A made its debut in Nature.
This article represents the research achievements of Wuhan University in the field of artificial photosynthesis. The paper is titled "Filling of Mesopores with Titanium Dioxide in Metal-Organic Frameworks for Carbon Dioxide Photoreduction." The first authors are Zhuo Jiang and Xiaohui Xu, with corresponding authors Professor Hexiang Deng and Professor Ling Zan from Wuhan University, and Professor Osamu Terasaki from ShanghaiTech University.
Photo of Professor Hexiang Deng's research group laboratory at Wuhan University
The important reaction equipment used in this work is Perfectlight Technology's flagship product, the Labsolar-6A all-glass automatic online trace gas analysis system.
Key Highlights of the Article:
The research group led by Hexiang Deng explored molecular customization at the mesoscale (2~50 nm) interface between inorganic semiconductor nanoparticles and metal-organic framework (MOF) channels from a materials synthesis perspective. They achieved an apparent quantum efficiency of 11.3% for CO₂ photoreduction under single-wavelength light excitation and observed the release of equimolar O₂. The construction of this molecular customization interface is similar to the localization of photocatalytic units in chloroplasts. Various "molecular compartments" (molecular compartment I and II) designed in this study allow precise customization of the chemical environment of titanium dioxide nanoparticles, significantly improving the separation and utilization of photo-generated electrons. CO₂ photoreduction experiments demonstrated that the photocatalytic activity of the three-dimensional ordered structure of TiO₂ in the MOF framework (TiO₂-in-MOF) was much higher than that of TiO₂ nanoparticles of the same size and TiO₂ surface-loaded on MOFs, fully showcasing the superiority of "molecular compartments" in structure.
Article Link:
