Natural photosynthesis plays an important role in maintaining environmental carbon balance. Taking inspiration from this, we developed a light-driven, enzymatic nanosystem for the highly selective production of formic acid from CO₂. The system combines photocatalytic graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) with two natural enzyme catalysts, carbonic anhydrase (CA) and formate dehydrogenase (FateDH), encapsulated in ZIF-8, a porous metal-organic framework (MOF). Efficient in situ regeneration of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) is realized through visible-light irradiation of g-C₃N₄ with a suitable redox potential (-0.3 V (NHE)). The introduction of ZIF-8 ensures a large amount of loaded protein with little damage to enzyme activity, and its encapsulation of CA and FateDH shortens the distance between the enzymes. This is conducive to increasing the diffusion of substances during the CO₂-to-formic acid cascade reaction, thus improving the reaction efficiency. This work is expected to provide new insight into the design and development of highly selective, artificial photosynthesis systems to efficiently convert CO₂ into fuels, chemicals, and other materials.

天然光合作用在维持环境碳平衡方面起着重要作用。从中汲取灵感，我们开发了一种光驱动的酶促纳米系统，用于从CO ₂高度选择性地生产甲酸。该系统将光催化石墨氮化碳（gC ₃ N ₄）与两种天然酶催化剂碳酸酐酶（CA）和甲酸脱氢酶（FateDH）结合在一起，并封装在多孔金属-有机骨架（MOF）ZIF-8中。通过gC ₃ N _4的可见光照射可实现还原烟酰胺腺嘌呤二核苷酸（NADH）的高效原位再生具有合适的氧化还原电势（-0.3 V（NHE））。ZIF-8的引入确保了大量的负载蛋白，而对酶的活性几乎没有损害，并且其对CA和FateDH的封装缩短了酶之间的距离。这有利于增加在CO _2-甲酸级联反应中物质的扩散，从而提高了反应效率。预期这项工作将为设计和开发具有高度选择性的人工光合作用系统提供新见解，以有效地将CO ₂转化为燃料，化学物质和其他材料。