Artificial photosynthesis: photoanodes based on polyquinoid dyes onto mesoporous tin oxide surface

Dye-sensitized photoelectrochemical cells represent an appealing solution for artificial photosynthesis, aimed at the conversion of solar light into fuels or commodity chemicals. Extensive efforts have been directed towards the development of photoelectrodes combining semiconductor materials and organic dyes; the use of molecular components allows to tune the absorption and redox properties of the material. Recently, we have reported the use of a class of pentacyclic quinoid organic dyes (KuQuinone) chemisorbed onto semiconducting tin oxide as photoanodes for water oxidation. In this work, we investigate the effect of the SnO2 semiconductor thickness and morphology and of the dye-anchoring group on the photoelectrochemical performance of the electrodes. The optimized materials are mesoporous SnO2 layers with 2.5 μm film thickness combined with a KuQuinone dye with a 3-carboxylpropyl-anchoring chain: these electrodes achieve light-harvesting efficiency of 93% at the maximum absorption wavelength of 533 nm, and photocurrent density J up to 350 μA/cm2 in the photoelectrochemical oxidation of ascorbate, although with a limited incident photon-to-current efficiency of 0.075%. Calculations based on the density functional theory (DFT) support the role of the reduced species of the KuQuinone dye via a proton-coupled electron transfer as the competent species involved in the electron transfer to the tin oxide semiconductor. Finally, a preliminary investigation of the photoelectrodes towards benzyl alcohol oxidation is presented, achieving photocurrent density up to 90 μA/cm2 in acetonitrile in the presence of N-hydroxysuccinimide and pyridine as redox mediator and base, respectively. These results support the possibility of using molecular-based materials in synthetic photoelectrochemistry. Graphic abstract