Hierarchical metal-organic framework nanoflowers for effective CO2 transformation driven by visible light

Although metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been considered as a new class of photocatalysts for CO2 photoreduction, more efforts need to be devoted to enhancing their catalytic activities. In this work, for the first time, we have developed metal-organic flower-like hierarchical nanostructures (nanoflowers), based on a bifunctional Ru-MOF, to act as stable and effective heterogeneous photocatalysts for visible-light driven CO2 photoreduction. The unique flower-like nanostructure remarkably enhances the photocatalytic activity of this material, which is almost 150% more active than that of solid micro-crystals. Meanwhile, the flower-like 3D hierarchical nanostructures also highly improve the stability of the nanosheets of the Ru-MOF, which greatly promotes the photostability and recyclability of the photocatalysts. We believe that our study will pave a new way to improve the photocatalytic performance of MOF based photocatalysts for CO2 reduction.