Editors: | F. Kongoli, F. Marquis, N. Chikhradze, T. Prikhna, O. Adiguzel, E. Aifantis, R. Das, P. Trovalusci |
Publisher: | Flogen Star OUTREACH |
Publication Year: | 2023 |
Pages: | 288 pages |
ISBN: | 978-1-998384-00-6 (CD) |
ISSN: | 2291-1227 (Metals and Materials Processing in a Clean Environment Series) |
Photocatalytic hydrogen generation from water on conjugated polymer semiconductors has drawn considerable attentions for providing a clean alternative energy to resolve the environmental and energy issues in an economic route [1, 2].Polyimides (PIs), famous as an engineering material, represent another kind of polymer photocatalyst that is functionally comparable with g-C3N4. Prepared by solid-state thermal condensation (PI-TC), they commonly possessed branched morphology because lack of structural tailoring strategies. The performance for photocatalytic water splitting based on this polymer was largely limited due to the intrinsic structure defects in the dendritic chains of PI-TC impeded the electron delocalization and inter-chain charge transport. In the present work, a two-dimensional imide-based conjugated polymer (PI-SM) with preferred (001) orientation was constructed by solvent induced assemblage. High performance of 1640 μmol h-1g-1 for solar driven photocatalytic hydrogen evolution and excellent stability were achieved due to tunnelling charge transport between neighbour molecular sheets. The strong solvent dependent conformation variation is found to be intimately related to the specific interactions between the polymer chain and solvent molecules that play primary driving force for the chain diffusion and rearrangement [3]. This work provides further insight into the intrinsic interacting mechanism of solvent induced crystallization of conjugated polymer and paves an innovative way for synthesis of efficient polymer semiconductor photocatalysts.