Abstract:
Semiconductor photocatalysts can directly use sunlight to produce clean and renewable energy, offering a potentially viable solution for addressing energy and environmental crisis. Recently, conjugated microporous polymers have emerged as a very promising class of materials in solar energy conversion. However, they generally exhibit low catalytic efficiency and insufficient catalytic stability. Moreover, they lack the capability to utilize long-wavelength photons in the near-infrared region. In this work, aza-fused conjugated microporous polymer (aza-CMP) is synthesized via condensation of 1,2,4,5-benzenetetramine and cyclohexanone. The as-obtained aza-CMP exhibits a band-gap as low as 1.22 eV, ensuring that it can absorb both visible light and near-infrared photons. Meanwhile, results show that aza-CMP can effectively drive the degradation of various organic dyes such as Congo Red, Rhodamine B, and Methyl Orange under visible and near-infrared light irradiation. In contrast, other photocatalysts such as P25-TiO
2, g-C
3N
4, and Ag-TiO
2 are unable to oxidize organic dyes under near-infrared light irradiation, suggesting that aza-CMP is very efficient in absorbing visible and long-wavelength photons for photocatalytic oxidation of organic pollutants. In addition, multiple cycling experiments confirm that aza-CMP is very stable during the catalytic process, which can retain its structure and high catalytic activity after multiple cycles. Mechanistic investigations further reveal that the active species toward photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes are the photogenerated holes and singlet oxygen. Furthermore, the pathways of the photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes are unveiled by using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), clearly demonstrating the capability of aza-CMP in oxidizing organic dyes into small molecules. This study potentially provides new prospects in the design and synthesis of conjugated polymers for various photocatalytic applications.