Hydrogen reduction with polymer nanoparticles (Pdots)

Abstract

While inorganic catalysts show promising results for photocatalytic hydrogen production, they are mostly limited due to their large bandgap and therefore, only a small part of the solar spectrum can be utilized for water splitting reactions. Organic semiconductors on the other hand can be easily modified, which allows to tune the band gap to specific absorption regions. This helps maximizing the number of photons that can induce photocatalytic reactions.This work introduces a new ternary Polymer Nanoparticle (Pdots) system for hydrogen reduction in photocatalysis. The system consists of the polymer PTQ10 and the acceptor molecules ITIC and Y5 and shows a hydrogen evolution rate (HER) of 66.5 mmol g-1 h-1 or 1.82 mL g-1 h-1. The photophysical properties of the system as well as the single components is characterized with UV-Vis and Fluorescence Spectroscopy. Furthermore, the impact of energy and charge transfer processes between the components on the photocatalytic activity is investigated using steady state and transient absorption spectroscopy. Thereby, a donor/acceptor interface between PTQ10 as donor, and ITIC and Y5 as acceptors is identified. The transfer processes between donor and acceptor are dominated by energy transfer.