Zhengxu Cai

Rational Design of Porous Conjugated Polymers and Roles of Residual Palladium for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production

Developing highly efficient photocatalyts for water splitting is one of the grand challenges in solar energy conversion. Here, we report the rational design and synthesis of porous conjugated polymer (PCP) that photocatalytically generates hydrogen from water splitting. The design mimics natural photosynthetics systems with conjugated polymer component to harvest photons and the transition metal part to facilitate catalytic activities. A series of PCPs have been synthesized with different light harvesting chromophores and transition metal binding bipyridyl (bpy) sites. The photocatalytic activity of these bpy-containing PCPs can be greatly enhanced due to the improved light absorption, better wettability, local ordering structure, and the improved charge separation process. The PCP made of strong and fully conjugated donor chromophore DBD (M4) shows the highest hydrogen production rate at ∼33 μmol/h. The results indicate that copolymerization between a strong electron donor and weak electron acceptor into the same polymer chain is a useful strategy for developing efficient photocatalysts. This study also reveals that the residual palladium in the PCP networks plays a key role for the catalytic performance. The hydrogen generation activity of PCP photocatalyst can be further enhanced to 164 μmol/h with an apparent quantum yield of 1.8% at 350 nm by loading 2 wt % of extra platinum cocatalyst.

Beyond Molecular Wires: Design Molecular Electronic Functions Based on Dipolar Effect

As the semiconductor companies officially abandoned the pursuit of Moores law, the limitation of silicone-based semiconductor electronic devices is approaching. Single molecular devices are considered as a potential solution to overcome the physical barriers caused by quantum interferences because the intermolecular interactions are mainly through weak van der Waals force between molecular building blocks. In this bottom-up approach, components are built from atoms up, allowing great control over the molecular properties. Moreover, single molecular devices are powerful tools to understand quantum physics, reaction mechanism, and electron and charge transfer processes in organic semiconductors and molecules. So far, a great deal of effort is focused on understanding charge transport through organic single-molecular wires. However, to control charge transport, molecular diodes, switches, transistors, and memories are crucial. Significant progress in these topics has been achieved in the past years. The introduction and advances of scanning tunneling microscope break-junction (STM-BJ) techniques have led to more detailed characterization of new molecular structures. The modern organic chemistry provides an efficient access to a variety of functional moieties in single molecular device. These moieties have the potential to be incorporated in miniature circuits or incorporated as parts in molecular machines, bioelectronics devices, and bottom-up molecular devices. In this Account, we discuss progress mainly made in our lab in designing and characterizing organic single-molecular electronic components beyond molecular wires and with varied functions. We have synthesized and demonstrated molecular diodes with p-n junction structures through various scanning probe microscopy techniques. The assembly of the molecular diodes was achieved by using Langmuir-Blodgett technique or thiol/gold self-assembly chemistry with orthogonal protecting groups. We have thoroughly investigated the rectification effect of different types of p-n junction diodes and its modification by structural and external effects. Through a combination of structural modifications, low temperature study, and quantum mechanical calculations, we showed that the origin of the rectification in these molecules can be attributed to the effect of dipolar field. Further studies on charge transport through transition metal complexes and anchoring group effect supported this conclusion. Most recently, a model system of molecular transistor was synthesized and demonstrated by STM-BJ technique. The gating effect in the molecular wire originated from the tuning of the energy levels via dipolar field and can be turned on/off by dipolar field and chemical stimulation. This is the first example of gated charge transport in molecular electronics.

Exceptional Single-Molecule Transport Properties of Ladder-Type Heteroacene Molecular Wires

A series of ladder-type fused heteroacenes consisting of thiophenes and benzothiophenes were synthesized and functionalized with thiol groups for single-molecule electrical measurements via a scanning tunneling microscopy break-junction method. It was found that this molecular wire system possesses exceptional charge transport properties with weak length dependence. The tunneling decay constant β was estimated to be 0.088 and 0.047 Å(-1) under 0.1 and 0.5 bias, respectively, which is one of the lowest β values among other non-metal-containing molecular wires, indicating that a planar ladder structure favors charge transport. Transition voltage spectroscopy showed that the energy barrier decreases as the length of the molecule increases. The general trend of the energy offsets derived from the transition voltage via the Newns-Anderson model agrees well with that of the Fermi/HOMO energy level difference. Nonequilibrium Greens function/density functional theory was used to further investigate the transport process in these molecular wires.

Molecular Rectification Tuned by Through-Space Gating Effect

Inspired by transistors and electron transfer in proteins, we designed a group of pyridinoparacyclophane based diodes to study the through-space electronic gating effect on molecular rectification. It was shown that an edge-on gate effectively tunes the rectification ratio of a diode via through-space interaction. Higher rectification ratio was obtained for more electron-rich gating groups. The transition voltage spectroscopy showed that the forward transition voltage is correlated to the Hammett parameter of the gating group. Combining theoretical calculation and experimental data, we proposed that the change in rectification was induced by a shift in HOMO level both spatially and energetically. This design principle based on through-space edge-on gate is demonstrated on molecular wires, switches, and now diodes, showing the potential of molecular design in increasing the complexity of single-molecule electronic devices.

Structure control and photocatalytic performance of porous conjugated polymers based on perylene diimide

Here we report the synthesis and photocatalytic performance of a new series of n-type porous conjugated polymers (PCPs) based on perylene diimide (PDI) with band gap energies ranging from 1.54 to 2.25 eV. The corresponding structures and the properties of the prepared PCPs were fine-tuned by varying their copolymerization ratios. Their photocatalytic performances for hydrogen evolution from water in the presence of sacrificial agents were studied, and the results demonstrate that their catalytic efficiency is strongly monomer composition dependent. Namely, the incorporation of PDI and bipyridyl moieties into the network leads to the highest hydrogen evolution rate (∼7.2 μmol h−1), which is attributed to the better charge transport properties (coplanar structure) and better wettability properties of bpy-containing PCPs. Photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye by using these n-type PCPs as photocatalysts was also achievable. The photocatalytic degradation rate increases as the HOMO energy level of PCPs decreases, which implies that the degradation pathway is probably through oxidation by the photogenerated holes of PCPs.

The Synergistic Effect between Triphenylpyrrole Isomers as Donors, Linking Groups and Acceptors on the Fluorescence Properties of D-π-A Compounds in the Solid State

Eight donor-π-acceptor (D-π-A) compounds employing triphenylpyrrole isomers (TPP-1,2,5 and TPP-1,3,4) as donors, malononitrile (CN) and 1H-indene-1,3(2H)-dione (CO) as acceptors, pyridone (P) and benzopyran (B) as π-linking groups were synthesized. The compounds exhibited aggregation-induced emission and piezochromic properties. Compared with previously reported donors, triphenylpyrroles induced all the compounds to have more remarkable photophysical properties. The compounds containing TPP-1,2,5 and P moieties displayed stronger fluorescence intensities, shorter emission wavelengths, and more distinct piezochromic properties. However, the same phenomenon was observed in the TPP-1,3,4-containing system if B was as π-linker. Moreover, the CN acceptor endowed the compound to have a relatively strong fluorescent intensity, in which CO induced a relatively long emission wavelength. That is, the photophysical properties of D-π-A compounds can be controlled by adjusting the structure of donor, linker and acceptor.

Synthesis of Alternating Donor–Acceptor Ladder-Type Molecules and Investigation of Their Multiple Charge-Transfer Pathways

We describe the synthesis as well as the optical and charge-transport properties of a series of donor-acceptor (D-A) ladder-type heteroacenes. These molecules are stable, soluble, and contain up to 24 fused rings. Structural analyses indicated that the backbones of S 10r and Se 10r are bent in single crystals. The three 10-ring heteroacenes were functionalized with thiol anchoring groups and used for single-molecular conductance measurements. The highest conductance was observed for molecular wires containing a benzoselenadiazole (BSD) moiety, which exhibits the narrowest band gap. Multiple charge-transport pathways were observed in molecular wires containing either benzothiadiazole (BTD) or BSD. The conductance is a complex function of both energy gap and orbital alignment.

Enhancement in Open-Circuit Voltage in Organic Solar Cells by Using Ladder-Type Nonfullerene Acceptors

The open-circuit voltage ( Voc) loss has always been a major factor in lowering power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) in bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs). A method to improve the Voc is indispensable to achieve high PCEs. In this paper, we investigated a series of perylene diimide-based ladder-type molecules as electron acceptors in nonfullerene OPVs. The D-A ladder-type structures described here lock our π-systems into a planar structure and eliminate bond twisting associated with linear conjugated systems. This enlarges the interface energy gap (Δ EDA), extends electronic delocalization, and hence improves the Voc. More importantly, these devices showed an increase in Voc without compromising either the Jsc or the FF. C5r exhibited a strong intermolecular interaction and a PCE value of 6.1%. Moreover, grazing-incident wide-angle X-ray scattering analysis and atomic force microscopy images suggested that our fused-ring acceptors showed a suitable domain size and uniform blend films, which were not affected by their rigid molecular structures.

A Single-Molecular AND Gate Operated with Two Orthogonal Switching Mechanisms

Single-molecular electronics is a potential solution to nanoscale electronic devices. While simple functional single-molecule devices such as diodes, switches, and wires are well studied, complex single-molecular systems with multiple functional units are rarely investigated. Here, a single-molecule AND logic gate is constructed from a proton-switchable edge-on gated pyridinoparacyclophane unit with a light-switchable diarylethene unit. The AND gate can be controlled orthogonally by light and protonation and produce desired electrical output at room temperature. The AND gate shows high conductivity when treated with UV light and in the neutral state, and low conductivity when treated either with visible light or acid. A conductance difference of 7.3 is observed for the switching from the highest conducting state to second-highest conducting state and a conductance ratio of 94 is observed between the most and least conducting states. The orthogonality of the two stimuli is further demonstrated by UV-vis, NMR, and density function theory calculations. This is a demonstration of concept of constructing a complex single-molecule electronic device from two coupled functional units.

Turn-on fluorescent probe with aggregation-induced emission characteristics for polyazoles

Polyazoles are a class of explosives and the synthetic precursors of antibiotics. The detection of polyazole compounds is quite important but challenging. In this work, a novel fluorescent probe with AIE-activity was designed and synthesized. The probe displays dramatic turn-on behavior and visible distinguishability by the naked eye in the presence of 5-nitro-2,4-dihydro-3H-1,2,4-triazole-3-one (NTO) with a limit of detection (LOD) of 7 nM in a water/THF mixture. In addition, the probe shows a high sensitivity to most of the polyazoles, while other common explosives and imidazoles induced a fairly low interference effect, which makes the probe potentially applicable in monitoring water quality.