Template-Directed Synthesis of Photocatalyst-Encapsulating Metal–Organic Frameworks with Boosted Photocatalytic Activity

In the past decade, the use of visible light to promote organic transformations has gained intense attention. In this study, we developed a template-directed synthesis method to use homogeneous Ru and Ir photocatalysts as structure-directing templates and succeeded to prepare a series of photocatalyst-encapsulating metal–organic frameworks (photocatalyst@MOFs) with zeolite-like structures. The open channels and polyhedral cages of MOFs effectively dispersed the encapsulated photocatalysts and facilitated the transport of reactants and products, leading to boosted catalytic activity and good reusability toward important organic reactions such as aerobic oxidation reaction of benzyl halides and the cyclization of tertiary anilines and maleimides under visible light. Moreover, we also demonstrate the versatility and universality of our templating strategy. It not only can form MOFs which cannot be accessed by other synthesis methods, but also can encapsulate various commercially available homogeneous photocatalysts into MOFs. This work explores an avenue to prepare heterogeneous photocatalysts to catalyze value-added reactions.