Different functional group modified zirconium frameworks for the photocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide

Conversion of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into useful chemicals is an important and urgent task from the energy and environment perspective. Herein, through a post-synthetic modification (PSM) approach, we synthesized three new metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) UiO-68-PSMs with different functional groups, namely, UiO-68-F, UiO-68-CH 3 and UiO-68-OCH 3 , for the photocatalytic reduction of CO 2 . By introducing electron-withdrawing and electron-donating groups, UiO-68-PSMs showed different performance for the selective photocatalytic reduction of CO 2 to CO because of change in charge separation and band gap of UiO caused by the presence of different functional groups. UiO-68-PSMs of UiO-68-F, UiO-68-CH 3 and UiO-68-OCH 3 achieved by post-synthetic modification were found to show different activity for photocatalytic CO 2 reduction.