Grafting small organic molecules on donor-acceptor polymers to regulate electron push-pull interactions for efficient H2O2 production

Pyrene units are grafted on a D-A polymer by amidation to construct a D + -A structure and improve H2O2 production. Experimental results show that the H2O2 generation rate of this D + -A polymer (PTM-PY) is 2.94 mmol g−1 h−1, which is higher than the original D-A polymer (PTM) under the same conditions. Mechanistic studies reveal that the increased photocatalytic performance of PTM-PY is attributed to the enhanced light-harvesting capacity and electron push-pull interactions after grafting pyrene as a donor. Therefore, grafting the appropriate small organic molecules on the D-A polymer skeleton can improve their performance further, in addition to the routine methods of optimizing the donor/acceptor ratio and reaction conditions. This is the first report of small organic molecules grafted on a D-A polymer to construct a D + -A polymer for photocatalytic H2O2 generation.