Biomass-derived metal-organic hybrids for CO2 transformation under ambient conditions

The fabrication of catalysts that can activate CO2 under ambient conditions is very interesting but challenging. Metal-organic hybrids (MOHs) have promising applications in catalysis, and their fabrication from renewable resources is very attractive. Herein, we report a simple protocol to fabricate metal-organic hybrids (MOHs) from chitosan, phytic acid and ZnCl2, obtaining mesoporous MOH-Zn possessing -OH, -NH2, and -PO4 groups. The resulting MOH-Zn shows excellent activity for CO2 activation and enables the cyclization of epoxides with CO2 to proceed under ambient conditions, affording a high turnover frequency of 7.8 h(-1). The high performance of MOH-Zn originates from the synergistic effects among multi-functional sites in the catalysts.