Assembling UiO-66 into layered HTiNbO5 nanosheets for efficient photocatalytic CO2 reduction

In the pursuit of restoring and preserving our planet's natural equilibrium, the development of photocatalytic agents with exceptional aptitude for CO2 reduction stands as an essential undertaking, which would be greatly facilitated with the energy regeneration and environmental purification. Herein, a composite material HTiNbO5/UiO-66 (UTi) was amalgamated by a one-step solvothermal method. The resultant composite material exhibited remarkable improvement on the photoreduction efficiency of CO2 reduction compared with pristine UiO-66 and HTiNbO5. Impressively, UTi composite with 3 wt% HTiNbO5 (UTi-3) illustrated the highest CO2 photoreducation activity to CO, the CO yield of UTi-3 was about 9.3 and 11.2 times higher than that of pure UiO-66 and HTiNbO5, respectively. The significantly improved photocatalytic performance could be ascribed to the enlargement of specific surface area, the improved visible-light absorption range and shrinkage of the energy band gap, which can increase photogenerated electron production to promote the reduction reaction of CO2 to CO. The insights obtained from this study can guide the application of semiconductor composites in the field of CO2 photocatalytic reduction, so as to design high efficiency photocatalysts.