2D porphyrin-based MOFs with highly dispersed Pt nanoparticles via in-situ partial reduction strategy from porphyrin embedded with single-atom Pt for enhancing photocatalytic hydrogen production

An efficient and stable 2D MOF TMF-Pt/Pt NPs photocatalyst was prepared by in-situ partial hydrogenation reduction of TMF-Pt with single-atom Pt embedded in porphyrin center to improve photocatalytic hydrogen production. It is important to note that TMF-Pt/Pt NPs has an extremely high photocatalytic hydrogen generation rate (33185.66 µmol·g−1·h−1) in comparison to the majority of previous MOFs photocatalysts, which could be due to the in-situ uniformly grown Pt NPs are very adjacent to the Ti-oxo clusters within the 2D MOFs so that the gradually accumulated electrons around the Ti-oxo clusters via LMCT pathway could instantaneously transfer to Pt NPs through the Schottky injection field effect. Through a series of experimental characterizations, especially atomic force microscopy (AFM) and transmission scanning electron microscope (TEM), confirmed the highly dispersed Pt NPs within the 2D MOFs. This work provided us with a novel idea to realize the uniform distribution of noble metals nanoparticles in the channel cavity of MOFs through an in-situ synthesis strategy, so as to facilitate the more efficient Schottky injection field effect between noble metals nanoparticles and metal clusters of the MOFs, thereby achieving more excellent charge carrier separation efficiency.