Linear Conjugated Polymers for Solar-Driven Hydrogen Peroxide Production: The Importance of Catalyst Stability

Overview

Journal J Am Chem Soc

Publisher American Chemical Society

Specialty Chemistry

Date 2021 Nov 10

PMID 34757722

Citations 15

Authors

Lunjie Liu

Mei-Yan Gao

Haofan Yang

Xiaoyan Wang

Xiaobo Li

Andrew I Cooper

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Hydrogen peroxide (HO) is one of the most important industrial oxidants. In principle, photocatalytic HO synthesis from oxygen and HO using sunlight could provide a cleaner alternative route to the current anthraquinone process. Recently, conjugated organic materials have been studied as photocatalysts for solar fuels synthesis because they offer synthetic tunability over a large chemical space. Here, we used high-throughput experiments to discover a linear conjugated polymer, poly(3-4-ethynylphenyl)ethynyl)pyridine (DE7), which exhibits efficient photocatalytic HO production from HO and O under visible light illumination for periods of up to 10 h or so. The apparent quantum yield was 8.7% at 420 nm. Mechanistic investigations showed that the HO was produced via the photoinduced stepwise reduction of O. At longer photolysis times, however, this catalyst decomposed, suggesting a need to focus the photostability of organic photocatalysts, as well as the initial catalytic production rates.

Citing Articles

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