Oxide-derived copper (OD-Cu) is the most efficient and likely practical electrocatalyst for CO ₂ reduction toward multicarbon products. However, the inevitable but poorly understood reconstruction from the pristine state to the working state of OD-Cu under strong reduction conditions largely hinders the rational construction of catalysts toward multicarbon products, especially C ₃ products like n-propanol. Here, we simulate the reconstruction of CuO and Cu ₂ O into their derived Cu by molecular dynamics, revealing that CuO-derived Cu (CuOD-Cu) intrinsically has a richer population of undercoordinated Cu sites and higher surficial Cu atom density than the counterpart Cu ₂ O-derived Cu (Cu ₂ OD-Cu) because of the vigorous oxygen removal. In situ spectroscopes disclose that the coordination number of CuOD-Cu is considerably lower than that of Cu ₂ OD-Cu, enabling the fast kinetics of CO ₂ reaction and strengthened binding of *C ₂ intermediate(s). Benefiting from the rich undercoordinated Cu sites, CuOD-Cu achieves remarkable n-propanol faradaic efficiency up to ~17.9%, whereas the Cu ₂ OD-Cu dominantly generates formate.

A simple and effective strategy is developed to realize visible light–driven heterogeneous asymmetric catalysis. A chiral organic molecule, which only has very weak catalytic activity in asymmetric α-alkylation of aldehydes under visible light, is utilized as the ligand to coordinate with different types of metal ions, including Zn²⁺, Zr⁴⁺, and Ti⁴⁺, for construction of crystalline metal organic frameworks (MOFs). Impressively, when used as heterogeneous catalysts, all of the synthesized MOFs exhibit markedly enhanced activity. Furthermore, the asymmetric catalytic performance of these MOFs could be easily altered by selecting different metal ions, owing to the tunable electron transfer property between metal ions and chiral ligands. This work will provide a new approach for fabrication of heterogeneous catalysts and trigger more enthusiasm to conduct the asymmetric catalysis driven by visible light.