Artificial light-harvesting 2D photosynthetic systems with iron phthalocyanine/graphitic carbon nitride composites for highly efficient CO2 reduction

Photocatalytic conversion of CO2 into value-added chemicals is considered to be a promising strategy to capture greenhouse gas as well as produce energy. The exploration of efficient and stable photocatalysts is crucial to promote CO2 reduction. Herein, we report the synthesis of a heterogeneous catalyst by integration of iron phthalocyanine (FePc) with g-C(3)N(4)via a simple reflux method, in which FePc works as the catalytic center and g-C3N4 acts as the photosensitizer. After 12 h of light irradiation, the CO yield by using the FePc/g-C3N4 catalyst is found to be 1696.96 mu mol g(-1) and no liquid products are detected. The mechanism for CO2 photoreduction over the FePc/g-C3N4 hybrid catalyst is proposed. To enhance its practicality and portability, we further load the powder catalyst on polyester fibers (PET). The obtained FePc/g-C3N4@PET exhibits high activity for CO2 reduction under both simulated and natural sunlight, with a CO yield of 493.35 mu mol g(-1) and 490.53 mu mol g(-1), respectively in 12 h. This work may pave the way to develop an approach for fabricating high-efficient 2D artificial photosynthetic systems for CO2 reduction.

Automated summary

The FePc/g-C3N4 hybrid catalyst showed high efficiency for CO2 reduction under light irradiation, and even higher activity when loaded on PET fibers. This work may lead to the development of efficient 2D artificial photosynthetic systems for CO2 reduction.