Regulating crystallinity in linear conjugated polymer to boost the internal electric field for remarkable visible-light-driven disinfection

Conjugated linear polymers are promising metal-free photocatalysts for visible-light-driven photocatalytic water disinfection, but it was still bottlenecked by the insufficient photogenerated charge separation and transport (CST) process. Herein, we obtained the highly crystalline imine-linked conjugated linear poly-mer (ODA-BPAH) with a greatly enhanced CST process. The highly crystalline ODA-BPAH exhibited excel-lent broad-spectrum water disinfection efficiency up to 99.99999% in 1 h, which is among the reported highest of state-of-the-art photocatalysts. The crystallinity of ODA-BPAH was regulated by simply turn-ing the solvent and the experiment results revealed that the ODA-BPAH with high crystallinity exhibited higher internal electric field strength and photocatalytic performance than that with low crystallinity, which indicates that higher crystallinity in linear conjugated polymers contributes to superior CST ef-ficiency as well as the generation of reactive oxygen species. This work highlights the impact of poly-mer crystallinity on the internal electric field and proves that linear poly-imine could be a new type of promising metal-free photocatalyst for water treatment. (c) 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The editorial office of Journal of Materials Science & Technology.

Automated summary

In this study, highly crystalline conjugated polymer ODA-BPAH was prepared and found to exhibit superior photocatalytic performance. The results revealed that the crystallinity of conjugated polymers is related to their photocatalytic efficiency and the generation of reactive oxygen species. This study provides a new promising metal-free photocatalyst for water treatment.