Artificial light-harvesting 2D photosynthetic systems with iron phthalocyanine/graphitic carbon nitride composites for highly efficient CO2 reduction

Photocatalytic conversion of CO2 into value-added chemicals is considered to be a promising strategy to capture greenhouse gas as well as produce energy. The exploration of efficient and stable photocatalysts is crucial to promote CO2 reduction. Herein, we report the synthesis of a heterogeneous catalyst by integration of iron phthalocyanine (FePc) with g-C3N4via a simple reflux method, in which FePc works as the catalytic center and g-C3N4 acts as the photosensitizer. After 12 h of light irradiation, the CO yield by using the FePc/g-C3N4 catalyst is found to be 1696.96 μmol g−1 and no liquid products are detected. The mechanism for CO2 photoreduction over the FePc/g-C3N4 hybrid catalyst is proposed. To enhance its practicality and portability, we further load the powder catalyst on polyester fibers (PET). The obtained FePc/g-C3N4@PET exhibits high activity for CO2 reduction under both simulated and natural sunlight, with a CO yield of 493.35 μmol g−1 and 490.53 μmol g−1, respectively in 12 h. This work may pave the way to develop an approach for fabricating high-efficient 2D artificial photosynthetic systems for CO2 reduction.