FeOOH photo-deposited perylene linear polymer with accelerated charge separation for photocatalytic overall water splitting

It is a challenge to develop single polymer-based photocatalyst for overall water splitting without adding sacrificial agents due to the insufficient driving force for charge separation and the lack of active sites of organic polymer. Metal oxyhyroxides are widely acted as co-catalyst for photoelectrocatalysis oxygen evolution reaction. Here, we firstly report the peryleno[1,12-bcd] thiophene sulfone-based linear co-polymer PS-5 for photocatalytic overall water splitting by photo-depositing simple and low-cost co-catalyst FeOOH under the visible-light illumination. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations and experimental results indicated clearly that the oxygen vacancies-rich beta-FeOOH can effectively promote the separation of photo-generated excitons and provide active sites for photocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction. As a result, the average H-2 and O-2 production rates of optimized PS-5/beta-FeOOH-0.2M reach at similar to 170 and similar to 76.6 mu mol h(-1) g(-1), respectively, with a stoichiometric ratio at about 2:1. This work provides a simple and low cost method for the preparation of overall water splitting system based on polymer photocatalyst.

Automated summary

This study presents a novel linear co-polymer PS-5 based on peryleno[1,12-bcd] thiophene sulfone, which achieved visible-light photocatalytic overall water splitting by photo-depositing low-cost FeOOH co-catalyst. Both experimental and theoretical analyses demonstrated that the oxygen vacancies-rich beta-FeOOH effectively promoted the separation of photo-generated excitons and acted as active sites for the photocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction. This work provides a simple and cost-effective method for preparing an overall water splitting system based on polymer photocatalyst.