Photocatalytic reduction of CO2 into solar fuels using M-BTC metal organic frameworks for environmental protection and energy applications

The photo catalytic reduction of CO2 into solar fuels and value-added chemicals is very interesting in the view point of green chemistry. It offers a clean and energy saving solution for the major environmental challenges of global warming and climate change. Recently, the use of transition metal-based MOFs photocatalyst has become more popular in this process due to their porous structure, abundance of metal site and organic functionalities. Herein, we derived divalent transition metal-basedMOFs (Zn2+, Cu2+ , Mn2+) as photocatalyst materials. The obtained photo catalyst materials were characterized by XRD, XPS, SEM and TEM technique to know the structural, optical, photocatalytic and morphological properties. They were subsequently tested for photo catalytic reduction of CO2 and results shows that all the heterostructure M-BTC possess significant ability of photo catalytic reduction of CO2. Moreover, among the three catalyst, Zn-BTC MOFs showed the outstanding performance towards of photo catalytic reduction of CO2. Gas chromatographic analysis confirms the formation of value-added products such as CH3OH, Methane and Carbon Monoxide. The possible photo catalytic mechanism discussed and supported its outstanding performance.