Tailoring Layer Number of 2D Porphyrin-Based MOFs Towards Photocoupled Electroreduction of CO2

Inspired by the success of graphene, a series of single- or few-layer 2D materials have been developed and applied in the past decade. Here, the successful preparation of monolayer and bilayer 2D porphyrin-based metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) by a facile solvothermal method is reported. The structure transition from monolayer to bilayer drives distinct electronic properties and restructuring behaviors, which finally results in distinct catalytic pathways towards CO2 electrocatalysis. The monolayer favors CO2-to-C-2 pathway due to the restructuring of Cu-O-4 sites, while CO and HCOO- are the major products over the bilayer. In photocoupled electrocatalysis, the Faradaic efficiency (FE) of the C-2 compounds shows a nearly fourfold increase on the monolayer than that under dark conditions (FEC2 increases from 11.9% to 41.1% at -1.4 V). For comparison, the light field plays a negligible effect on the bilayer. The light-induced selectivity optimization is investigated by experimental characterization and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. This work opens up a novel possibility to tune the selectivity of carbon products just by tailoring the layer number of the 2D material.

Automated summary

This paper reports a simple method for preparing monolayer and bilayer 2D porphyrin-based metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and finds that the structural transition between monolayer and bilayer leads to different electrocatalytic pathways and affects product selectivity.