Photoactive Metal–Organic Framework and Its Film for Light-Driven Hydrogen Production and Carbon Dioxide Reduction

The design of a new photocatalytic system and integrating the essential components in a structurally controlled manner to create artificially photosynthetic systems is high desirable. By incorporating a photoactive triphenylamine moiety to assemble a Gd-based metal–organic framework as a heterogeneous photosensitizer, new artificial systems were constructed for the proton and carbon dioxide reduction under irradiation. The assembled MOFs exhibited a one-dimensional metal-oxygen pillar that was connected together by the depronated TCA3– ligands to form a three-dimensional noninterpenetrating porous framework. The combining of proton reduction and/or the carbon dioxide reduction catalysts, i.e., the Fe-Fe hydrogenase active site models and the Ni(Cyclam) complexes, initiated a photoinduced single electron transfer from its excited state to the substrate. The system exhibited an initial TOF of 320 h–1 of hydrogen per catalyst and an overall quantum yield of about 0.21% and is able to reduce carbon dioxide under irradiation. The deposit of the photoactive Gd-TCA into the film of an α-Al2O3 plate provided a platform for the practical applications through prolonging the lifetime of the artifical system and allowed the easily operated devices being recyclable as a promising photocatalytic system.