Organic photoelectrode engineering: accelerating photocurrent generation via donor-acceptor interactions and surface-assisted synthetic approach
Loading...
Date
2021-03-21
ORCID
Advisor
Referee
Mark
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Altmetrics
Abstract
Conventional photoelectrocatalysts composed of precious metals and inorganic elements have limited synthetic design, hence, hampered modularity of their photophysical properties. Here, we demonstrate a scalable, one-pot synthetic approach to grow organic polymer films on the surface of the conventional copper plate under mild conditions. Molecular precursors, containing electron-rich thiophene and electron-deficient triazine-rings, were combined into a donor-acceptor pi-conjugated polymer with a broad visible light adsorption range due to a narrow bandgap of 1.42 eV. The strong charge push-pull effect enabled the fabricated donor-acceptor material to have a marked activity as an electrode in a photoelectrochemical cell, reaching anodic photocurrent density of 6.8 mu A cm(-2) (at 0.6 V vs. Ag/AgCl, pH 7). This value is 3 times higher than that of the model donor-donor thiophene-only-based polymer and twice as high as that of the analogue synthesized in bulk using the heterogenous CuCl catalyst. In addition, the fabricated photoanode showed a 2-fold increase in the photoelectrocatalytic oxygen evolution from water upon simulated sunlight irradiation with the photocurrent density up to 4.8 mA cm(-2) (at 1.0 V vs. Ag/AgCl, pH 14). The proposed engineering strategy opens new pathways toward the fabrication of efficient organic "green" materials for photoelectrocatalytic solar energy conversion.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Journal of Materials Chemistry A. 2021, vol. 9, issue 11, p. 7162-7171.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/TA/D0TA11820F#!divAbstract
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/TA/D0TA11820F#!divAbstract
Document type
Peer-reviewed
Document version
Published version
Date of access to the full text
Language of document
en