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Attempting to couple photochemical CO2 reduction with N2 fixation is usually difficult, because the reaction conditions for these two processes are typically incompatible mutually. Here, we report that light-driven biohybrid system can utilize abundant, atmospheric N2 to produce electron donors via biological nitrogen fixation for achieving effective photochemical CO2 reduction. This biohybrid system was constructed by incorporating molecular cobalt-based photocatalysts into N2-fixing bacteria. It is found that N2-fixing bacteria can convert N2 into reductive organic nitrogen and create a localized anaerobic environment, which allow the incorporated photocatalysts to continuously perform photocatalytic CO2 reduction under aerobic conditions. Specifically, the light-driven biohybrid system displays a high formic acid production rate of over 1.41×10−14 mol h−1 cell−1 under visible light irradiation, and the organic nitrogen content is over 3-fold increase within 48 hours. This work offers a useful strategy for coupling CO2 conversion with N2 fixation under mild and environmentally benign conditions.

Crystalline porous materials (CPMs) not only present the precise integration of molecular building blocks into extensible structures with periodic frameworks and regular pores, but also provide limited molecular spaces for the interactions of guest molecules, electrons and photons. Incorporating aggregation-induced emission (AIE)-based units into crystalline porous frameworks can result in unique luminescent properties. AIE-based CPMs have widely tunable composition, high luminescent efficiency and good photo-stability, which make them useful for biomedical applications involving bio-sensing, bio-imaging and imaging-guided therapies. This review focused on structure design and luminescent property modulation of AIE-based CPMs with highlights on their applications in biomedical fields. The prospect and challenges in the development of AIE-based CPMs from chemistry, materials to biomedical applications were also discussed.