Issue 11, 2018

Investigation of excited state, reductive quenching, and intramolecular electron transfer of Ru(ii)–Re(i) supramolecular photocatalysts for CO2 reduction using time-resolved IR measurements

Abstract

Supramolecular photocatalysts in which Ru(II) photosensitizer and Re(I) catalyst units are connected to each other by an ethylene linker are among the best known, most effective and durable photocatalytic systems for CO2 reduction. In this paper we report, for the first time, time-resolved infrared (TRIR) spectra of three of these binuclear complexes to uncover why the catalysts function so efficiently. Selective excitation of the Ru unit with a 532 nm laser pulse induces slow intramolecular electron transfer from the 3MLCT excited state of the Ru unit to the Re unit, with rate constants of (1.0–1.1) × 104 s−1 as a major component and (3.5–4.3) × 106 s−1 as a minor component, in acetonitrile. The produced charge-separated state has a long lifetime, with charge recombination rate constants of only (6.5–8.4) × 104 s−1. Thus, although it has a large driving force (−ΔG0CR ∼ 2.6 eV), this process is in the Marcus inverted region. On the other hand, in the presence of 1-benzyl-1,4-dihydronicotinamide (BNAH), reductive quenching of the excited Ru unit proceeds much faster (kq[BNAH (0.2 M)] = (3.5–3.8) × 106 s−1) than the abovementioned intramolecular oxidative quenching, producing the one-electron-reduced species (OERS) of the Ru unit. Nanosecond TRIR data clearly show that intramolecular electron transfer from the OERS of the Ru unit to the Re unit (kET > 2 × 107 s−1) is much faster than from the excited state of the Ru unit, and that it is also faster than the reductive quenching process of the excited Ru unit by BNAH. To measure the exact value of kET, picosecond TRIR spectroscopy and a stronger reductant were used. Thus, in the case of the binuclear complex with tri(p-fluorophenyl)phosphine ligands (RuRe(FPh)), for which intramolecular electron transfer is expected to be the fastest among the three binuclear complexes, in the presence of 1,3-dimethyl-2-phenyl-2,3-dihydro-1H-benzo[d]imidazole (BIH), kET was measured as kET = (1.4 ± 0.1) × 109 s−1. This clearly shows that intramolecular electron transfer in these RuRe binuclear supramolecular photocatalysts is not the rate-determining process in the photocatalytic reduction of CO2, which is one of the main reasons why they work so efficiently.

Graphical abstract: Investigation of excited state, reductive quenching, and intramolecular electron transfer of Ru(ii)–Re(i) supramolecular photocatalysts for CO2 reduction using time-resolved IR measurements

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
17 Dec. 2017
Accepted
13 Febr. 2018
First published
14 Febr. 2018
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2018,9, 2961-2974

Investigation of excited state, reductive quenching, and intramolecular electron transfer of Ru(II)–Re(I) supramolecular photocatalysts for CO2 reduction using time-resolved IR measurements

K. Koike, D. C. Grills, Y. Tamaki, E. Fujita, K. Okubo, Y. Yamazaki, M. Saigo, T. Mukuta, K. Onda and O. Ishitani, Chem. Sci., 2018, 9, 2961 DOI: 10.1039/C7SC05338J

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements