Volume 198, 2017

Catecholamine-functionalized graphene as a biomimetic redox shuttle for solar water oxidation

Abstract

In natural photosynthesis, solar energy is converted to chemical energy through a cascaded, photoinduced charge transfer chain that consists of primary and secondary acceptor quinones (i.e., QA and QB). This leads to an exceptionally high near-unity quantum yield. Inspired by the unique multistep architecture of charge transfer in nature, we have synthesized a catecholamine-functionalized, reduced graphene oxide (RGO) film as a redox mediator that can mimic quinone acceptors in photosystem II. We used polynorepinephrine (PNE) as a redox-shuttling chemical. We also used it to coat graphene oxide (GO) and to reduce GO to RGO. The quinone ligands in PNE, which are characterized by a charge transfer involving two electrons and two protons, acted as electron acceptors that facilitated charge transfer in photocatalytic water oxidation. Furthermore, PNE-coated RGO film promoted fast charge separation in [Ru(bpy)3]2+ and increased the activity of cobalt phosphate on photocatalytic water oxidation more than two-fold. The results suggest that our bio-inspired strategy for the construction of a forward charge transfer pathway can provide more opportunities to realize efficient artificial photosynthesis.

Associated articles

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
15 Sep 2016
Accepted
19 Oct 2016
First published
19 Oct 2016

Faraday Discuss., 2017,198, 135-145

Catecholamine-functionalized graphene as a biomimetic redox shuttle for solar water oxidation

E. J. Son, J. H. Kim, J. W. Ko and C. B. Park, Faraday Discuss., 2017, 198, 135 DOI: 10.1039/C6FD00190D

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