UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Bandgap Engineering of Organic Semiconductors for Highly Efficient Photocatalytic Water Splitting

Wang, Y; Silveri, F; Bayazit, MK; Ruan, Q; Li, Y; Xie, J; Catlow, CRA; (2018) Bandgap Engineering of Organic Semiconductors for Highly Efficient Photocatalytic Water Splitting. Advanced Energy Materials , 8 (24) 10.1002/aenm.201801084. Green open access

[thumbnail of Tang_et_al-2018-Advanced_Energy_Materials.pdf]
Preview
Text
Tang_et_al-2018-Advanced_Energy_Materials.pdf - Published Version

Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

The bandgap engineering of semiconductors, in particular low‐cost organic/polymeric photocatalysts could directly influence their behavior in visible photon harvesting. However, an effective and rational pathway to stepwise change of the bandgap of an organic/polymeric photocatalyst is still very challenging. An efficient strategy is demonstrated to tailor the bandgap from 2.7 eV to 1.9 eV of organic photocatalysts by carefully manipulating the linker/terminal atoms in the chains via innovatively designed polymerization. These polymers work in a stable and efficient manner for both H2 and O2 evolution at ambient conditions (420 nm < λ < 710 nm), exhibiting up to 18 times higher hydrogen evolution rate (HER) than a reference photocatalyst g‐C3N4 and leading to high apparent quantum yields (AQYs) of 8.6%/2.5% at 420/500 nm, respectively. For the oxygen evolution rate (OER), the optimal polymer shows 19 times higher activity compared to g‐C3N4 with excellent AQYs of 4.3%/1.0% at 420/500 nm. Both theoretical modeling and spectroscopic results indicate that such remarkable enhancement is due to the increased light harvesting and improved charge separation. This strategy thus paves a novel avenue to fabricate highly efficient organic/polymeric photocatalysts with precisely tunable operation windows and enhanced charge separation.

Type: Article
Title: Bandgap Engineering of Organic Semiconductors for Highly Efficient Photocatalytic Water Splitting
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1002/aenm.201801084
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.201801084
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: bandgap, organic semiconductors, photocatalytic, polymers, water splitting
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Chemical Engineering
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Chemistry
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10056316
Downloads since deposit
185Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item