Pathways towards Boosting Solar‐Driven Hydrogen Evolution of Conjugated Polymers
Yaoyao Liu, Bingjie Li, Zhonghua Xiang
Abstract
Abstract Photocatalytic H 2 evolution under solar illumination has been considered to be a promising technology for green energy resources. Developing highly efficient photocatalysts for photocatalytic water splitting is long‐term desired but still challenging. Conjugated polymers (CPs) have attracted ongoing attention and have been considered to be promising alternatives for solar‐driven H 2 production due to the excellent merits of the large π‐conjugated system, versatile structures, tunable photoelectric properties, and well‐defined chemical composites. The excellent merits have offered numerous methods for boosting photocatalytic hydrogen evolution (PHE) of initial CP‐based photocatalysts, whose apparent quantum yield is dramatically increased from <1 to >20% in recent five years. According to the photocatalytic mechanism, this review herein systematically summarizes three major strategies for boosting photocatalytic H 2 production of CPs: 1) enhancing visible light absorption, 2) suppressing recombination of electron‐hole pairs, and 3) boosting surface catalytic reaction, mainly involving eleven methods, that is, copolymerization, modifying cross‐linker, constructing a donor‐acceptor structure, functionalization, fabricating organic heterojunction, loading cocatalyst, and surface modification. Finally, the perspectives towards the future development of PHE are proposed.