Diketopyrrolopyrrole-Based Donor–Acceptor Conjugated Microporous Polymers for Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production from Water

Developing efficient and wide spectrally acting photocatalysts for light-driven hydrogen production from water is highly desirable for solar energy conversion. Herein, diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) is used to combine with triphenylamine (TPA), bipyridyl (bdy), and biphenyl (bph) units for construction of conjugated microporous polymer photocatalysts. Although the synthesized two polymers, DPP-bdy-TPA and DPP-bph-TPA, have a similar framework structure, the former bearing a hydrophilic bipyridyl unit displays much better photocatalytic performance with hydrogen production rates of 6918 and 2780 μmol g^–1 h^–1 under a full-arc xenon lamp and visible light (>440 nm) illumination, respectively. Moreover, DPP-bdy-TPA has a wide photoaction spectrum with apparent quantum yields of 9.60% at 420 nm, 7.32% at 500 nm, and 0.31% at 600 nm, the so high values rarely achieved by present-known organic semiconductor photocatalysts. These results undoubtedly prove DPP is an excellent building block, and this work well exemplifies its utilization for construction of high-performance photocatalysts.