Why can poorly conductive Bi@UiO-MOF catalyze CO₂ electroreduction?

Metal NP @ metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are widely used in electrocatalysis. However, many of the MOFs are poorly conductive. Here, we loaded bismuth (Bi) into a Zr-based MOF of the UiO structure that is active for CO2 reduction to formate and found that a moderate conductivity of the nanosized MOFs is sufficient to support a reasonably high catalytic current density. This finding allows simpler catalyst design and quantitative rationalization of MOF electrocatalysis.