He et al. (2025): Direct Air Capture and Photoconversion of CO₂ to Ethylene by Defect-Tailored Cu₃-Based Metal–Organic Frameworks

Yu-Ou He, Wen-Yi Zheng, Yong Liu, Weng-Da Zhang, Huan Pang, Jiangwei Zhang, Wang-Kang Han and Zhi-Guo Gu, IN: Angewandte Chemie International Edition, https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202516438

The development of efficient direct air capture (DAC) systems coupled with photocatalytic CO₂ conversion is still an appealing challenge. Here, the authors engineered a series of defective Cu₃-based metal–organic frameworks (Cu₃-MOFs) for integrated atmospheric CO₂ capture and in situ photoreduction. The defective Cu₃-MOFs were constructed through selective removal of coordinated CO₃²⁻ from pristine MOFs with HCl etching, generating unsaturated Cu active sites for CO₂ harvesting, and the Cu₃-MOFs demonstrated enhanced CO₂ capture kinetics and capacity that compared to their pristine counterpart. Remarkably, the captured CO₂ could be directly photoreduced to C₂H₄ with an optimal production rate of 18.25 µmol·g⁻¹·h⁻¹ without additional photosensitizer or sacrificial agent.

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