The Assemblies Of Phthalocyanine Based Electron Donor-Acceptor Structures And Their Performances In Photocatalytic Water Splitting

Today, energy and environmental problems have been becoming two major issues. In the energy systems, as a secondary energy, hydrogen is considered as an ideal green energy with clean, efficient, safe and many other advantages. Early work of TiO2 photoelectrochemical hydrogen production was reported by Fujishima and Honda from University of Tokyo in 1972. The research reveals a possibility of photocatalytic hydrogen production under sunlight and opens a new way in using of solar photolysis. With the conversion from electrolysis of water to photocatalytic water splitting by heterogeneous semiconductor photocatalysts and the discovery of other photocatalysts besides TiO2, the research of photocatalytic hydrogen production has made great progress in the synthesis and modification of photocatalyst.Much more researches have been done in photocatalytic water splitting, but there are still some key issues need to be resolved. Such as:The energy conversion efficiency of photocatalytic water splitting under visible light is still low; during the photocatalytic water splitting process, the semiconductor catalytic activity may decreased or disappeared gradually; all metal sulfide, in the absence of electron donor sacrificial agents, is easily photochemical decomposed; the activity of materials is greatly depended on the co-catalysts and most of photocatalyst needs other oxidizing or reducing agents as sacrificial agents in reactions. To solve those of problems, works are focused on photocatalytic water splitting by the catalysts of organic semiconductor and inorganic semiconductor modified by organic dyes. Organic semiconductors have advantages of variety in sources and adjustable architecture, in which electron donor- acceptor research has been becoming one of the hotspots. Phthalocyanine, as a kind of organic electron donor with a wide range of visible light absorption and relatively stable structure, can be used for such studies.In this paper, for the purpose of studying the phthalocyanine-based electron donor-acceptor materials and their performance on photocatalytic water splitting, we access to a large number of literatures. The content of this study and important conclusions were summarized as follows:1. Based on the previous literatures about synthesis of phthalocyanines, nitro-phthalocyanine nickel was prepared by solid phase method and reduced into amino-phthalocyanine nickel by Sodium sulfide in DMF. At the same time, according to relevant literatures of graphene and graphene oxide, we prepared graphite oxide as electron acceptor material and characterized it.2. By liquid-solid phase assembly method, we prepared phthalocyanine-perylene donor-acceptor structure and studied its performance on photocatalytic water splitting. The liquid phase synthesis of phthalocyanine bonding with perylene was studied and its performance of photocatalytic water splitting was evaluated. Even the materials show a low performance on photocatalytic water splitting, its broad light absorption may be useful in other research.3. Phthalocyanine bonding with graphene oxide materials as electron donor-acceptor structure was prepared and its photocatalytic water splitting performance was investigated. The result shows that phthalocyanine bonding with graphene oxide materials has photocatalytic water splitting ability in middle level.