Converting p-terphenyl into a novel organo-catalyst for LED-driven energy and electron transfer photoreactions in water.
p-Terphenyl is a potent photoredox catalyst under UV-irradiation. Aiming for more sustainable reaction conditions, we added two sulfonate groups to this key structure to achieve water solubility and incorporated an SO2-bridge thereby shifting the absorption spectrum towards the visible. The resulting photocatalyst shows unexpected triplet reactivity in several test reactions.
Purely organic Vis-to-UV upconversion with an excited annihilator singlet beyond 4 eV
The conversion of visible light into high-energy UV photons via sensitized triplet–triplet annihilation (TTA-UC) could pave the way for several energy-demanding applications. However, only a handful of annihilator chromophores for Vis-to-UV upconversion are known and the current limit for the excited-state energy of the UV emitter in TTA-UC schemes is below 4 eV, i.e., in the spectral region (>310 nm) where the sun still provides a considerable photon flux. Herein, we present a novel biphenyl-based annihilator with a highly fluorescent singlet state at 4.04 eV. This annihilator can be combined with a widely-used TADF sensitizer to yield an efficient blue-light (2.77 eV) driven upconversion …
Controlling Spin-Correlated Radical Pairs with Donor-Acceptor Dyads: A New Concept to Generate Reduced Metal Complexes for More Efficient Photocatalysis
Abstract One‐electron reduced metal complexes derived from photoactive ruthenium or iridium complexes are important intermediates for substrate activation steps in photoredox catalysis and for the photocatalytic generation of solar fuels. However, owing to the heavy atom effect, direct photochemical pathways to these key intermediates suffer from intrinsic efficiency problems resulting from rapid geminate recombination of radical pairs within the so‐called solvent cage. In this study, we prepared and investigated molecular dyads capable of producing reduced metal complexes via an indirect pathway relying on a sequence of energy and electron transfer processes between a Ru complex and a cova…