A review for coordination chemistry in the design of heterogeneous photocatalysts

Most recently, a review article titled “Coordination chemistry in the design of heterogeneous photocatalysts”, from the research group led by Prof. Yujie Xiong at the University of Science and Technology of China, has been published in Chemical Society Reviews (Chem. Soc. Rev. 2017, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C6CS00727A).

Heterogeneous catalysts have been widely used for photocatalysis  a highly important process for energy conversion, owing to their merits such as easy separation of catalysts from reaction products, applicability to continuous chemical industry and recyclability. Yet homogenous photocatalysis receives tremendous attention as it can offer higher activity and selectivity with atomically dispersed catalytic sites and tunable light absorption. For this reason, there is a major trend to combine the advantages of both homogeneous and heterogeneous photocatalysts, in which coordination chemistry plays a role as the bridge. In this review article, Xiong research group provides the first systematic review to give a clear picture on recent progress by taking advantage of coordination chemistry. They specifically summarize the role of coordination chemistry as a versatile tool to engineer catalytically active sites, tune light harvesting and maneuver charge kinetics in heterogeneous photocatalysis. They then elaborate on the common fundamentals behind various materials systems, together with key spectroscopic characterization techniques and remaining challenges in this field. The typical applications of coordination chemistry in heterogeneous photocatalysis, including proton reduction, water oxidation, carbon dioxide reduction and organic reactions, are highlighted.

The related work was financially supported by the 973 Program, NSFC and CAS Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences.

---

Back