Splitting of water to hydrogen and oxygen on colloidal catalysts is a promising method for future energy and chemistry cycles. Although the size of the colloids determines catalytic performance, the control over the particles diameter is often synthetically difficult to achieve; especially, when avoiding stabilizing agent - organic molecules - that block accessible surface-active centers. We show here that ligand-free colloidal cobalt oxide can be integrated either with molecular and polymeric photo-catalysts for generation of oxygen from water. We accordingly correlated the photochemical results with the electrochemical studies, concluding that accessibility of the active species on the particles surface is crucial parameter in water oxidation.[1] Figure 1. <img src='https://acs-archive-assets2.s3.amazonaws.com/240nm/uploads/35551_aminoalcohol.jpg' alt='' /> In addition, we also showed successful integration of 3 nm Co3O4 crystals within graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) to construct a hybrid photo-catalyst made of abundant elements (C, N, Co, O) for the photocatalytic generation of oxygen from water.[2] The modification of g-C3N4 with Co3O4 leads to improvement of oxygen evolution rate by a factor of 9 over un-modified g-C3N4. Our results showed that Co3O4 particles can be successfully combined with homogenous and heterogeneous photo-catalysts for photochemical water oxidation.[1] Grzelczak, M.; Zhang, J.; Pfrommer, J.; Hartmann, J.; Driess, M.; Antonietti, M.; Wang, X. ACS Catal. 2013 , 3, 383-388.[2] Zhang, J.; Grzelczak, M.; Hou, Y.; Maeda, K.; Domen, K.; Fu, X.; Antonietti, M.; Wang, X. Chem. Sci. 2012 , 3, 443-446.

Integration of cobalt oxide with molecular and polymeric photocatalysts for efficient storage of solar energy in chemical bonds

247th National Meeting (2014)

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