Visible light driven reduction of CO2 catalyzed by an abundant manganese catalyst with zinc porphyrin photosensitizer

• We researched the visible light driven CO2 reduction using an abundant system containing tricarbonyl Mn catalyst and ZnTPP.
• Abundant and cheap metal manganese and zinc complexes were used in this study to replace novel rare metal complexes.
• In the aqueous acetonitrile reaction solution, carbon monoxide and formic acid were efficiently produced as gas and liquid products.

Visible light driven photocatalytic CO2 conversion has been investigated using abundant metal complexes catalyst fac-[Mn(phen)(CO)3Br] and photosensitizer ZnTPP, which efficiently produced carbon monoxide and formic acid in an aqueous acetonitrile solution. The photochemical and electrochemical properties of the catalysis system proved the good ability of the light utilization and the reduction. During the 180-min irradiation experiments with the Mn/Zn ratio of 2:1, the TONs reached 64 for the CO formation and 16 for the formic acid formation, respectively. An integrated mechanism was proposed for the CO2 reduction in this system. This photocatalyst system not only shows environmental friendly and sustainability, but also retains the product selectivity in the CO2 photoreduction system.

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