Recent advances in engineering active sites for photocatalytic CO₂ reduction

The photocatalytic conversion of green-house gas CO₂ into high value-added carbonaceous fuels and chemicals through harvesting solar energy is a great promising strategy for simultaneously tackling global environmental issues and the energy crisis. Considering the vital role of active sites in determining the activity and selectivity in photocatalytic CO₂ reduction reactions, great efforts have been directed toward engineering active sites for fabricating efficient photocatalysts. This review highlights recent advances in the strategies for engineering active sites on surfaces and in open frameworks toward photocatalytic CO₂ reduction, referring to surface vacancies, doped heteroatoms, functional groups, loaded metal nanoparticles, crystal facets, heterogeneous/homogeneous single-site catalysts and metal nodes/organic linkers in metal organic frameworks.