Recently, researchers from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering published their groundbreaking research titled “Aggregation-Induced Equidistant Dual Pt Atom Pairs for Effective CO₂ Photoreduction to C₂H₄” in ACS Catalysis (a top-tier journal in catalysis), with the work featured as the ‌cover article‌ of the issue. ‌Jiangsu University‌ is the first affiliation, while ‌Professor Jiexiang‌ Xia (Jiangsu University), ‌Professor Yuanbin‌ She (Zhejiang University of Technology), and ‌Professor Molly Meng-Jung Li‌ (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) served as corresponding authors.

The direct photocatalytic conversion of CO₂ into multi-carbon products (e.g., ethylene, C₂H₄) represents a cutting-edge and highly challenging frontier in global research, aligning with China’s national “Dual Carbon” strategy. A critical challenge lies in the precise regulation of CO₂ adsorption/activation and the compatibility of active sites during C–C coupling. While single-atom catalysts (SACs) exhibit high atomic utilization efficiency, their limitations in enhancing C–C coupling efficiency remain unresolved. Conventional catalysts often feature randomly distributed active atomic pairs on surfaces, whose disordered arrangement severely hinders C–C coupling. Thus, strategically engineering catalysts with well-defined dual atomic pair structures is a promising pathway to achieving efficient CO₂ photoreduction into multi-carbon chemicals like ethylene.

The study proposed a ‌molecular aggregation-induced strategy‌ to construct dual Pt atomic pairs. By aggregating Pt-TCPP metalloporphyrin on Bi₃O₄Br surfaces, the team successfully synthesized a ‌Pt-TCPP/Bi₃O₄Br catalyst‌ with equidistant dual Pt atom pairs, enabling direct photocatalytic CO₂ conversion to C₂H₄. Experimental results demonstrated that the ‌geometric advantages‌ of the equidistant dual Pt pairs significantly facilitated C–C coupling. This work further suggests that organic molecule modifications could optimize the spatial arrangement of metal sites, opening avenues for tailored catalyst design.

This research provides ‌theoretical and methodological insights‌ into the precise engineering of catalytic active sites and advances the development of efficient CO₂ photoreduction systems. The strategy holds potential for extension to other multielectron transfer catalytic processes, such as photocatalytic water splitting and nitrogen fixation.

The study was supported by the ‌National Natural Science Foundation of China.