Integration of noble metals with metal-organic frameworks for enhanced photocatalytic CO₂ reduction

Photocatalytic conversion of CO₂ into high value-added products offers an attractive strategy to address the severe challenges of energy shortage and global warming. Among various photocatalysts, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have gained growing attention due to their highly ordered porous architectures, large specific surface areas as well as abundant adsorption and active sites. Moreover, their intrinsically narrow bandgaps endow them with potential photocatalytic activity. On the other hand, noble metals utilized as industrial catalysts exhibit unparalleled catalytic activity and exceptional stability, making them irreplaceable in varied catalytic systems. These characteristics render noble metals highly complementary to MOFs, offering promising opportunities for development of efficient photocatalysts. In this frontier article, we summarized the recent advances and underlying mechanism of noble metal-MOF hybrid photocatalysts for photocatalytic CO₂ reduction by focusing on three key aspects: Schottky junctions, localized surface plasmon resonance effect and photosensitization. Finally, we discuss the prospects of noble metal-MOF composites for guiding the design of next-generation high-performance photocatalysts and advancing the fundamental understanding of the photocatalytic mechanism.