Organic crystalline nanoparticles with a long-lived charge-separated state for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen production

Abstract Photocatalysis offers a promising approach for renewable energy conversion and storage, but short lifetimes of charge-separated states in photocatalysts due to charge recombination limit its utility. Here we report an organic molecule with an acceptor–donor–acceptor configuration that can self assemble into highly crystalline nanoparticles. Transient absorption spectroscopy reveals that these crystalline assemblies can induce an ultra-long-lived charge-separated state of up to 1.2 s, attributed to initial symmetry-breaking charge separation, followed by charge hopping across closely packed molecules. These self-assembled nanoparticles have an impressive photocatalytic H 2 evolution rate of 126 mmol g…

• DL
  Diamond Light Source
• KO
  Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse

  Award: 2019.0156 & 2022.0223
• UU
  Uppsala Universitet