Restructuring surface frustrated Lewis pairs of MgAl-LDH through isomorphous Co doping for accelerating photocatalytic CO2 reduction

The adsorption of carbon dioxide on the catalyst surface is often neglected, and the improvement of adsorption activation capacity is important to realize the efficient conversion of carbon dioxide. In this paper, a novel layered double hydroxide Co-MgAl-LDH (CML) with frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) was successfully prepared by one-step hydrothermal doping of transition metal Co, which Co²⁺ and the oxygen vacancies brought about by the doping (Co²⁺-Vo) are the Lewis acid site, and adjacent hydroxyls are the Lewis base site, and In-situ experiments and Density Functional Theory (DFT) demonstrated that the FLPs effectively enhanced the CO₂ adsorption activation capacity of CML. The present work provides a new idea for modifying Layered double hydroxides (LDH) to construct FLPs, and also offers new hope for constructing high-performance LDH-based CO₂ reduction photocatalysts.