Publication date: 21st July 2025
Conjugated polymers are promising materials for using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, due to their suitable bandgaps and customisable molecular structure. Many factors simultaneously influence the photon to hydrogen conversion efficiency of conjugated polymers, making it difficult to optimise performance by design, but in recent years a number of design principles have emerged. These include the use of hydrophilic groups the formation of heterojunctions, the inclusion of metal nanoparticles, and the formation of polymer nanoparticles versus films [1]. These factors are investigated in this work using femtosecond transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy.
This work studies two fluorene-based copolymers, one is a copolymer of fluorene and triphenylene, the other is a copolymer of fluorene and dibenzothiophene sulphone (DBTS). The hydrophilic DBTS monomer attracts water to the polymer which is thought to increase the permittivity and thus aid dissociation of the photoexcited exciton [2]. In both polymers, hydrophilic triethylene glycol side chains are attached to the fluorene group for the same reason [3].
For these two copolymers, TA spectroscopy is used to compare thin films and nanoparticles, the inclusion of silver nanoparticles, and the formation of heterojunctions between the two polymers, and correlate these factors to photocatalytic performance. Conjugated polymers struggle to oxidise water so sacrificial electron donors (SEDs), which are oxidised in place of water, are required to achieve measurable rates of hydrogen evolution. The influence of these SEDs (triethylamine and ascorbic acid) is also studied.
The TA spectroscopy data is fit using two spectral components, one related to stimulated emission of bright states, and one related to non-emissive dark states. For pure polymer and mixed polymer nanoparticles, adding the SED increases the spontaneous photoluminescence, increases the lifetime of the bright state, and shortens the lifetime of the dark state. In the absence of SED, adding silver nanoparticles does not affect the charge carrier dynamics, but silver nanoparticles appear to prevent the SED from modifying the dynamics.
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