Solar-driven nitrogen fixation with bio-inspired Mo/Sr-MOFs photocatalysts at ambient conditions

Photocatalytic reduction of nitrogen to ammonia has attracted much attention recently because ammonia stands out as one of the indispensable chemicals on a global scale. Herein, bio-inspired MOFs Mo-NTC and Sr-NTC were designed and synthesized by using Mo or Sr as metal nodes and 1,4,5,8-naphthalenetetracarboxylic acid (H4NTC) as ligands which has visible-light responsiveness. The best photocatalytic nitrogen fixation performance of Sr-NTC was about 143.10 μmol·g−1·h−1 which is higher than Mo-NTC (70.20 μmol·g−1·h−1). The ability of Sr-NTC to convert nitrogen to ammonia was verified by 15N2 isotope labeling experiment and in-situ FTIR measurement. Various characterization methods were employed to confirm the enhanced performance of photocatalytic nitrogen reduction. This work provides a new idea for applying metal Sr and Mo and organic ligand to construct photocatalysis to fix nitrogen driven by solar at ambient conditions.