Polymer semiconductors toward efficient photocatalytic H2 production from sea water - understanding and exploiting the presence of ions

聚合物半导体从海水中高效光催化制氢——了解和利用离子的存在

• 批准号: EP/X027449/1
• 负责人: James Durrant
• 金额: $ 24.26万
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FX027449%2F1
• 关键词: Polymer; semiconductors; toward; efficient; photocatalytic

Global warming, increasing environmental pollution and limited fossil energy resources push our society to develop a more sustainable production and use of energy. Direct solar hydrogen production with suspended particles by photocatalysis offers an effective solution. However, until now, photocatalytic hydrogen evolution (PHE) suffers from limited efficiencies, is often poorly understood and neglects the practically important sea water environments, where performance typically decreases, but where particle based PHE would be most promising. In this project, we will first study ionic effects, induced by presence of sea water ions, on state of the art polymeric semiconductors systematically. Time resolved spectroscopy will provide fundamental insights into photophysical material properties that are affected by the presence of and interaction with the ions. This activity and property study will focus on hydrophilic donor-acceptor (D-A) structures, which were shown to perform very efficiently in a particle bulk heterojunction (BHJ). Next, we will explore photo-activation processes of polymer materials used for organic electrochemical transistors (OECT), which were shown to enhance the charge stabilization and transport properties upon interacting with sea water ions. By this, we will identify promising material candidates for next generation sea water photocatalysts, which we will study as (BHJ) nanoparticles and optimize toward higher PHE efficiencies in presence of ions. Thereby, this project will provide fundamental insights in ionic effects and their influence on the photocatalytic performance of polymer materials, as well as pathways to tune photophysical properties by ionic interactions. Photo-Iono-Catalysis hence presents an important step to make sea water PHE more viable, while shedding light on the possibility to modify material properties by environmental ionic interactions, which are extendable to many other energy conversion processes.

全球变暖，不断增加的环境污染和有限的化石能源资源促使我们的社会发展了更可持续的能源生产和使用。通过光催化的悬浮颗粒的直接太阳能产生提供有效的解决方案。然而，到目前为止，光催化氢的演化（PHE）遭受有限的效率，通常对了解实际上重要的海水环境忽略了，在这种情况下的性能通常会降低，但基于粒子的PHE将是最有前途的。在这个项目中，我们将系统地研究海水离子的存在，系统地对最先进的聚合物半导体系统地研究离子效应。时间分辨的光谱法将提供对受离子存在和相互作用影响的光物理材料特性的基本见解。这项活性和财产研究将集中于亲水供体 - 受体（D-A）结构，这些结构在粒子散装异质结（BHJ）中表现出非常有效的性能。接下来，我们将探索用于有机电化学晶体管（OECT）的聚合物材料的光激活过程，这些晶体管（OECT）被证明可增强与海水离子相互作用后的电荷稳定和运输特性。通过这种情况，我们将确定有希望的下一代海水光催化剂的有希望的物质候选物，我们将研究为（BHJ）纳米颗粒，并在存在离子的情况下对较高的PHE效率进行优化。因此，该项目将提供有关离子效应的基本见解及其对聚合物材料光催化性能的影响，以及通过离子相互作用调整光学特性的途径。因此，照片 - 离子量表提出了使海水更加可行的重要步骤，同时阐明了通过环境离子相互作用来修改材料特性的可能性，环境离子相互作用可扩展到许多其他能量转换过程。