Polymer heterojunctions (PHJs) have emerged as promising photocatalysts for the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution (PHE). Nevertheless, most PHJs exhibit unsatisfactory hydrogen evolution rate (HER), primarily attributing to their own high-energy Frenkel excitons and poor light capturing ability. In this paper, a molecular engineering strategy is developed to further broaden spectral response range and simultaneously accelerate Frenkel excitons dissociation within PHJs. For this purpose, three donor-acceptor (D-A) conjugated polymers/g-C 3 N 4 heterojunctions with alternative donor units (fluorene, carbazole, N-annulated perylene for P1, P2, and P3, respectively) and the invariant acceptor unit (benzothiadiazole) have been designed and fabricated for efficient PHE. Experimental results show that copolymerizing different donor units into the polymer skeleton not only extends the visiblelight response range but also promotes photoexciton separation within polymer/g-C 3 N 4 PHJs. Notably, copolymerizing the strongest electron donor unit (N-annulated perylene) achieves the best light capture ability and the most effective photoexcitation separation of the P3/g-C 3 N 4 , leading to significantly increase HRE of 13.0 mmol h −1 g −1 with a recorded apparent quantum yield of 27.32% at 520 nm. Importantly, the Type II heterojunction mechanism within P3/CN was first proved by theoretical calculation. This work provides a promising strategy for reasonably developing efficient PHJs for solar fuel production.

In this paper, a supramolecular system (P-PMPDI) has been successfully developed for highly efficient photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. P-PMPDI showed a superior hydrogen evolution reaction rate of 11.7 mmol g−1 h−1 and a recorded AQY of 2.96% at 550 nm.

Unassisted solar water splitting can be realized by connecting a photovoltaic (PV) device in series with a photoelectrochemical cell (PEC). However, the complex fabrication methods and inevitable usage of noble metal have limited its development. In this work, we have constructed a wired tandem device with printable triple-mesoscopic perovskite solar cells and a BiVO4 based PEC. Moreover, a noble-metal-free device was fabricated by using spin-coated amorphous MoS x films as a cathode instead of Pt. In unit area, the different fabrication forms of perovskite solar cells were proved to have a huge influence for the overall performance of the tandem device, in which three-serial PV (PV3) based device showed the highest photocurrent density of ∼3.0 mA/cm2 without external bias, and corresponding solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency was 3.1%. The noble-metal-free tandem device was fabricated using spin-coating and screen-printing methods, representing an environmentally friendly and sustainable method to generate hydrogen fuel.

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The hydrogen evolution rate of PDPP3B-O4 with butoxy chain was 5.53 mmol h−1 g−1 with 1% Pt loading (λ > 400 nm), increased 110 times than PDPP3B-C8 with octyl chain due to wider absorption spectrum and better wettability via side chain engineering.