Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Confinement of metal centers is a powerful tool to manipulate reactivity and tune selectivity in chemical transformations. While aluminum as a foil is inactive for carbon dioxide reduction and shows high selectivity for the hydrogen evolution reaction, here we show that aluminum confined in a metal-organic framework (MOF), MIL-53(Al), suppresses hydrogen evolution reaction activity and enhances carbon dioxide reduction. This aluminum MOF can produce up to 40% faradaic efficiency for carbon monoxide and formic acid. This study demonstrates that the unique reaction environment created by the MOF enables changes in reaction selectivity and can impart atypical catalytic capabilities to metals.