Efficient photocatalytic reduction of CO2 using Fe-based covalent triazine frameworks decorated with in situ grown ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles

The photocatalytic conversion of CO 2 into high-value chemicals is an ideal pathway to adjust the energy structure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this work, we reported a facile synthetic strategy of new photocatalyst (ZnFe 2 O 4 /FeP-CTFs), where ZnFe 2 O 4 nanoparticles (NPs) was in situ growth on iron porphyrin covalent triazine-based frameworks (FeP-CTFs) via one-pot ionothermal method. Such strategy can effectively prevent ZnFe 2 O 4 from agglomerating and blocking the pore structure of CTFs . Notably, a series of experiments demonstrated that anchoring sites of FeP-CTFs can effectively promote the crystal-plane ratio of high catalytic performance, in the assistance of Ru(bpy) 3 2+ , promoting higher photocatalytic CO 2 reduction activity (178 μmol h −1  g −1 for CO) of the as-prepared ZnFe 2 O 4 /FeP-CTFs under visible light compared with pure ZnFe 2 O 4 , FeP-CTFs, and their physical mixtures. A combination of experimental measurements and density functional theory calculation reveals that the strong interactions between ZnFe 2 O 4 NPs and FeP-CTFs support can facilitate the charge separation of photogenerated carriers and thereby benefit to photocatalytic CO 2 reduction.