Engineering the organic/inorganic nanocomposites by taking advantage of the high electrical conductivity of the inorganic semiconductors and the structure flexibility of the organic semiconductors (OSCs) provides chances to understand the structural and electronic contributions that give rise to increased activities, which is the imperious demand for methodical design of next-generation of oxygen evolution photocatalysts. Herein, perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic acid (PTCAD) bonded porous In₂O₃ nanosheets, PTCAD/In₂O₃ NSs, were fabricated to elucidate the performance of OSCs in light harvesting and charge separation toward photo-driven oxygen evolution reaction (OER). PTCAD coupled strongly to the conduction band (CB) of In₂O₃ NS and type-II energy alignment was constructed between these two organic-inorganic components. Consequently, upon excitation, electrons injected smoothly from PTCAD to In₂O₃ NS, leaving holes behind to perform water oxidation, which results in accelerated charge separation and transportation. Associated with the large specific area, high-speed electron transmission channels, abundant oxygen vacancies and active sites provided by the In₂O₃ NS, the PTCAD/In₂O₃ composites demonstrated highly reduced band gap (BG), boosted and stable photocurrent, as well as largely reduced overpotential, suggesting promises for broadband-light-triggered OER. In addition to the synergistic effects in promoting charge separation and inhibiting electron-hole recombination, the π-conjugated molecule, PTCAD, played a role of manipulating the lattice plane of the In₂O₃ nanostructure without disturbing its porous 2D structure, providing another potential approach for enhancement of catalytic activity by regulating the crystal faces. Importantly, water oxidation over PTCAD/In₂O₃ NSs is indeed a proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) processes, a key process for charge separation and water oxidation, which is significantly promoted by PTCAD. Ultimately, the photo-catalytic oxygen evolution yield enhanced greatly at the presence of PTCAD, indicating that our findings may provide clues for development of organic/inorganic hybrid semiconducting photocatalysts for solar fuels generation.

通过利用无机半导体的高电导率和有机半导体（OSC）的结构灵活性来对有机/无机纳米复合材料进行工程设计，提供了机会来了解引起活动增加的结构和电子贡献，这是迫在眉睫的需求用于下一代析氧光催化剂的方法设计。本文中，制备了per，3,4,9,10-四羧酸（PTCAD）键合的多孔In ₂ O ₃纳米片PTCAD / In ₂ O ₃ NSs，以阐明OSC在光收集和电荷分离方面对光敏电池的性能。驱动氧释放反应（OER）。PTCAD与In的导带（CB）强烈耦合在这两个有机-无机组分之间构建了₂ O ₃ NS和II型能级。因此，在激发时，电子从PTCAD平稳地注入In ₂ O ₃ NS中，在其后留下空穴以进行水氧化，从而加速了电荷的分离和传输。与In ₂ O ₃ NS，PTCAD / In ₂ O ₃提供的大比表面积，高速电子传输通道，丰富的氧空位和活性位点相关复合材料显示出带隙（BG）大大降低，光电流增强和稳定，以及超电势大大降低，这表明了宽带光触发OER的前景。除了促进电荷分离和抑制电子-空穴复合的协同作用外，π共轭分子PTCAD还起到了操纵In ₂ O ₃纳米结构的晶格面而不干扰其多孔2D结构的作用，从而提供了另一种潜力。通过调节晶面来增强催化活性的方法。重要的是，水在PTCAD / In ₂ O _3上的氧化NSs确实是质子耦合电子转移（PCET）过程，这是电荷分离和水氧化的关键过程，而PTCAD大大促进了该过程。最终，在存在PTCAD的情况下，光催化氧的释放产率大大提高，这表明我们的发现可能为开发用于太阳能燃料的有机/无机杂化半导体光催化剂提供线索。