Dr. Muhammad Zahid

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
Saudi Arabia

Abstract Title: Pt-N Catalytic Centres Concisely Enhance Interfacial Charge Transfer in Amines Functionalized Pt@MOFs for Selective Conversion of CO2 to CH4

Biography:

Muhammad Zahid (PhD) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Refining and Advanced Chemicals, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia. He earned his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry under Prof. Zhu Yujun at Heilongjiang University, China. His research focuses on the rational design and synthesis of functional porous crystalline catalysts-such as MOFs, ZIFs, and g-C3N4-based composites-and precious-metal nanomaterials (nanoparticles, nanoclusters, single-atom catalysts) confined within these porous frameworks. These materials are engineered for CO2 capture, storage, and conversion; selective hydrogenation and hydrodeoxygenation of organic compounds; energy harvesting; and environmental remediation via photocatalysis and adsorption.

Research Interest:

Improving ligand-to-active metal charge transfer (LAMCT) by finely tuning the organic ligand is a decisive strategy to enhance charge transfer in metal organic frameworks (MOFs)-based catalysts. However, in most MOFs loaded with active metal catalysts, electron transmission encounters massive obstacle at the interface between the two constituents owing to poor LAMCT. Herein, amines (-NH2) functionalized MOFs (NH2-MIL-101(Cr)) encapsulated active metal Pt nanoclusters (NCs) catalysts are synthesized by the polyol reduction method and utilized for the photoreduction of CO2. Surprisingly, the introduction of -NH2 (electron donating) groups within the matrix of MIL-101(Cr) improved the electron migration through the LAMCT process, fostering a synergistic interaction with Pt. The combined experimental analysis exposed the high number of metallic Pt (Pt0) in Pt@NH2-MIL-101(Cr) catalyst through seamless electron shuttling from N of -NH2 group to excited Pt generating versatile hybrid Pt-N catalytic centres. Consequently, these versatile hybrid catalytic centres act as electro-nucleophilic centres, which enable the efficient and selective conversion of C=O bond in CO2 to harvest CH4 (131.0 µmol.g−1) and maintain excellent stability and selectivity for consecutive five rounds, superior to Pt@MIL-101(Cr) and most reported catalysts. Our study verified that the precise tuning of organic ligands in MOFs immensely improves the surface-active centres, electron migration, and catalytic selectivity of the excited Pt NCs catalysts encaged inside MOFs through an improved LAMCT pathway.