Copper doped Ce/Zr oxides catalysts derived from from mixed-metal MOFs for thermal CO2 hydrogenation

Converting CO2 to methanol is a one of the most promising process to recycle CO2. However, the selectivity and the yield to methanol of this process are low. To maximize turnover per metal site, we desire structures where every or most metal sites are exposed on a surface. Metal-organic frameworks emerged as an attractive template to derive nanostructured metal oxide particles dispersed in a porous carbon matrix. In this work, we synthesized metal oxide-derived Cu-doped Ce/Zr mixed cluster in UiO-66 with various Ce/Zr metal ratios. The controlled pyrolysis helps to avoid sintering of the formed metal oxides, and we expect the Cu species to be well dispersed in the support structure. However, the structure of the materials has not yet elucidated. In order to draw a correlation between the catalytic performance and the structure, the characterization of Ce-Zr, Cu-Cu, Cu-Zr, and Cu-Ce interactions are crucially required.