A general strategy via photoelectrocatalytic oxygen reduction for generating singlet oxygen with carbon bridged carbon-nitride electrode

With the ever-growing demand of clean water for the healthy world, water purification has become an urgent global issue. Singlet oxygen (O-1(2)) as unique non-radical derivative of oxygen, possessing unoccupied pi* orbital and exhibiting high selectivity towards electron-rich organic pollutants. Nevertheless, most of the approaches suffer from low-efficiency or biotoxicity, which severely restrict their potential applications. Therefore, in this work, we propose a general strategy via photoelectrocatalytic for selectively reducing oxygen to O-1(2) with designed carbon bridged carbon nitride (CBCN). This work highlights the important role of synergistic photo-electro-catalytic effect for selectively generating the O-1(2) via oxygen reduction pathway, which can be a promising way especially for degrading electron-rich pollutants. (C) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

Automated summary

This study proposes a general strategy using photoelectrocatalysis to selectively reduce oxygen to O-1(2) with designed carbon bridged carbon nitride for degrading electron-rich organic pollutants. The synergistic photo-electro-catalytic effect plays an important role in this process, showing promising potential for application.