The enhancement of electron transportation and photo-catalytic activity for hydrogen generation by introducing spin-polarized current into dye-sensitized photo-catalyst

Abstract

In this work, implanting polyiodides into graphene (RGO) not only led to the spin-polarization of photo-generated electrons, but also induced Rashba spin–orbit coupling to an optimum level on which the spin electrons could tunnel between the honeycomb sub-lattices of RGO via the p-orbitals of polyiodides. Due to the high efficiency, long lifetime and low energy loss of the spin transportation, the photo-currents were therefore promoted remarkably and the turn-over frequency (TOF) of hydrogen generation was improved by up to 123% for dye-sensitized visible-light-driven HER, and the mechanism has been proven to be effective in four different dye-sensitized HER systems.