Atom‐Economical Synthesis of Dimethyl Carbonate from CO₂: Engineering Reactive Frustrated Lewis Pairs on Ceria with Vacancy Clusters

Abstract

The chemical conversion of CO₂ to long-chain chemicals is considered as a highly attractive method to produce value-added organics, while the underlying reaction mechanism remains unclear. By constructing surface vacancy-cluster-mediated solid frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs), the 100 % atom-economical, efficient chemical conversion of CO₂ to dimethyl carbonate (DMC) was realized. By taking CeO₂ as a model system, we illustrate that FLP sites can efficiently accelerate the coupling and conversion of key intermediates. As demonstrated, CeO₂ with rich FLP sites shows improved reaction activity and achieves a high yield of DMC up to 15.3 mmol g^-1 . In addition, by means of synchrotron radiation in situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier-transform spectroscopy, combined with density functional theory calculations, the reaction mechanism on the FLP site was investigated systematically and in-depth, providing pioneering insights into the underlying pathway for CO₂ chemical conversion to long-chain chemicals.