An 'ice-melting' kinetic control strategy for highly photocatalytic organic nanocrystals. Issue 47 (25th November 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chen, Yingzhi; Jiang, Dongjian; Zhang, Yujuan; Yao, Shenglian; Rosei, Federico; Zhang, Xiaohong; Huang, Zheng-Hong; Wang, Lu-Ning; Kang, Feiyu
• Is Part Of: Journal of materials chemistry. Volume 8:Issue 47(2020)
• Page Start: 25275
• Page End: 25282
• Publication Date: 2020-11-25
• Subjects: Materials -- Research -- Periodicals; Chemistry, Analytic -- Periodicals; Environmental sciences -- Research -- Periodicals; 543.0284
• DOI: 10.1039/d0ta09502h
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2050-7488

Abstract

Abstract : A facile and general 'ice melting' kinetic control strategy is proposed to synthesize highly photocatalytic organic nanocrystals. Abstract : Engineering the size, shape and crystallinity of organic semiconductor nanostructures (OSNs) offers the opportunity of fine tuning their optoelectronic properties for photocatalytic applications. Here, we report a facile and general 'ice-melting' kinetic control strategy to synthesize OSNs with excellent photocatalytic performance. The ultraslow release and interaction of organic molecules from ice melting yields an ultralow local concentration (∼five orders of magnitude fewer molecules), fundamentally enhancing the energy barrier thus leading to their relaxed and ordered assembly into refined nanocrystals (∼one order of magnitude smaller in size, morphological change from amorphous to crystalline); such nanocrystals display improved light-harvesting and charge transfer properties and consequent photocatalytic efficiency towards degrading organic pollutants compared to standard OSNs, or even commercial titania photocatalysts (Degussa P25); we also generalize the 'ice-melting' kinetic control strategy to synthesize a series of highly photoactive organic nanocrystals.