A Novel Donor-π-Acceptor Type Sensitizer for Dye Sensitized Photochemical Hydrogen Generation

A novel triphenylamine (TPA) based donor-π-acceptor (D-π-A) dye is synthesized and its optical and electrochemical properties are examined by UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry methods, respectively. The synthesized D-π-A dye plays a role as a visible light sensitizer to wide bandgap TiO2 photocatalyst. Hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are carried out by using D-π-A dye sensitized TiO2 (Dye/TiO2) under visible light irradiation in the aqueous triethanolamine (TEOA) medium. Photoelectrochemical properties of Dye/TiO2 are investigated by using linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) and chronoamperometry (CA) techniques in the aqueous Na2SO4/TEOA solution and its transient photoelectrochemical response is reached 90 μA cm-2. In addition, phtocatalytic hydrogen evolution rates are found out as 0.52 mmol g-1 h-1 and 1.95 mmol g-1 h-1 by using of Dye/TiO2 and Dye/TiO2/Pt, respectively, which are obtained by in situ photoreduction of H2PtCl6 on the Dye/TiO2 photocatalyst. The mechanism of photochemical HER is explained by electrochemical band levels of the D-π-A dye and TiO2 photocatalyst.

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