Enhanced CO₂ Photoreduction through Spontaneous Charge Separation in End-Capping Assembly of Heterostructured...

It is well known that charge separation is crucial for efficient photocatalytic solar conversion. Although some covalent-organic frameworks (COFs) exhibit visible-light harvest, the large exciton binding energies reduce their photocatalytic efficiencies. Herein, we developed a novel method to post-treat the olefin-linked COFs with end-capping polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) for spontaneous charge separation. Interestingly, a type-II heterostructure is constructed in our perylene-modified COFs which displays drastically enhanced performance for photocatalytic CO₂ reduction, with an efficiency of 8-fold higher than that of unmodified COF. A combination of electrochemical, steady-state, and time-resolved spectroscopic measurements indicates that such drastically enhanced performance should be attributed to photoinduced spontaneous charge separation in the heterostructure. These results illustrate the feasibility of engineering the charge-separation properties of crystalline porous frameworks at a molecular level for artificial photosynthesis.