Organic photovoltaic photocatalytic hydrogen production: 2-cantilever versus 6-cantilever molecular platforms
摘要
Due to the intrinsically flexible skeletons, loose aggregation and disorder packing of organic materials, organic photovoltaic nanoparticle (OPV-NP) encounters inferior exciton dissociation and charge recombination, especially poor operational stability when applied in photocatalytic hydrogen production. To alleviate these shortages, two new acceptors were constructed by boosting 2-cantilever XZ-1 to 4-cantilever XZ-2 and 6-cantilever XZ-3, thus greatly extending the conjugated plane towards two-dimensionality. Consequently, the decreased reorganization energies, weaker exciton binding, prolonged exciton lifetimes and more ordered molecular packings were observed for 6-cantilever XZ-3, further affording an excellent hydrogen yielding rate (184.68 mmol g −1 h−1). For the PM6:XZ-3 system, the hydrogen production rate was maintained at 106.1% at 40 h compared to the first 10 h of the photocatalytic hydrogenation rate. By unveiling a clear relationship of molecular spatial size-dependent photocatalytic performance, our work paves a new avenue for improving both photocatalytic activity and stability of OPV-NPs synergistically.