RESUMEN
Invited for the cover of this issue are the groups of Marcella Bonchio at the University of Padova and Jérôme Canivet at the CNRS-University of Lyon. The image depicts the hierarchical self-organization of bio-inspired quantasomes, crosslinked within a polystyrene network to enchain their lateral and orthogonal proximity for long-lasting oxygen evolution using green photons. Read the full text of the article at 10.1002/chem.202303784.
RESUMEN
PSII-inspired quantasomes have emerged as promising artificial photosystems evolving oxygen from water due to their integrated multi-chromophore asset, hierarchical architecture, and efficient light-harvesting capabilities. In this study, we adopt a combined covalent and supramolecular strategy by implementing a poly-styrene backbone that reinforces proximity and pairing between adjacent perylenebisimide (PBI) quantasome units. The covalent fixation of the quantasome network results in a significant enhancement of the photoelectrocatalytic performance on engineered IO-ITO photoanodes, with up to 290 % photocurrent increase (J up to 100â µA cm-2, λ >450â nm, applied bias <1.23â V vs RHE, F.E.O2 >80 %) compared to the non-polymerized analog. Moreover, the direct PBI-quantasome polymerization on the photoanode surface was performed by light irradiation of the radical initiator 2,2'-Azobis(2-methylpropionamidine), improving the photoelectrode robustness under high solar irradiance (>8 suns) and limiting the photocurrent loss (<20 %) at 1.52â V vs RHE compared to the non-polymerized system.
