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Highly Efficient Simultaneous Photocatalytic Reduction of CO2 and O2 from Air Using Conjugated Microporous Polymers with Ionic Imidazolium Sites
Energy & Environmental Materials 2026, 9(1)
Published: 16 July 2025
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Efficient photocatalytic reduction of CO2 is crucial to decrease the atmospheric concentration of CO2. Pairing this process with H2O2 production is of considerable importance for simultaneously producing value-added chemicals. However, the photocatalysts reported for such a process suffer from a high recombination rate of the surface/bulk charges, as well as inefficient enrichment and activation toward CO2 and O2, resulting in low conversion efficiency even in the presence of organic sacrificial agents and expensive metal co-catalysts. Herein, two 1,3,5-triphenylbenzene-based organic polymers with high ionic density and porosity are prepared through a facile Sonogashira polymerization. The ionic imidazolium sites embedded in the polymeric skeleton provide the two polymers (iCMP-1 and iCMP-2) with adsorptive selectivity for CO2/N2 up to 98–102 at 273 K, facilitating the enrichment of CO2 and O2 molecules around the catalytic centers, thus boosting their catalytic conversion directly from air under solar light (100 mW cm−2). Benefiting from the improved charge separation and broad light absorption, along with high CO2 and O2 uptake, iCMP-2 can deliver excellent CO and H2O2 yields (611.8 and 810.6 μmol h−1 g−1, respectively) under an atmosphere composed of water vapor and air without any co-catalysts.

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