Selective Photoreduction of Carbon Dioxide to Methane in a Polymer Framework

Abstract Photoreduction of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) has attracted great attentions. Herein, a polymer framework is used to fabricate a micro reaction environment benefit for selective photoreduction of CO 2 to methane (CH 4 ), with a mixture of platinum and cadmium sulfide as the photocatalyst. In a polymer framework without nitrogen (N) and oxygen (O) sites, carbon monoxide (CO) is mainly produced from the photoreduction, with an evolution rate of 142.1 µmol h −1 . Yet, in a polymer framework with O and N sites, CH 4 is the only carbon‐based product from the photoreduction, with a production rate of 263.7 µmol h −1 . O and N sites of the polymer framework lead CO 2 to be converted into CO which bonds to photocatalyst strongly and prefer to undergoing hydrogenation to CH 4 , thus changing carbon‐based product from CO to CH 4 . This opens a new way to achieve more efficient selective photoreduction of CO 2 .