In natural photosynthesis, electrons and protons are generated and stored during the light reactions, and then released and utilized in the dark reactions to drive subsequent conversions. Inspired by this, constructing artificial systems capable of performing both photocatalytic and dark catalytic reactions represents an important direction for solar energy capture and chemical energy storage. However, existing dark–photocatalytic materials typically rely on sacrificial electron donors, are sensitive to oxygen, or require external metal catalysts to initiate dark reactions. To address this issue, the authors used the pyrene‑imine COF Py‑1P as a precursor and converted the imine linkages into quinoline linkages via post‑synthetic modification, yielding the Py‑1Q COF. This design exploits the quinoline units to extend the π‑conjugation and tune the frontier orbital distribution, enabling the material to both reduce O₂ to H₂O₂ under illumination and store a portion of the photogenerated electrons, which are subsequently released after the light source is removed to drive dark H₂O₂ production.
https://doi.org/10.1039/d6sc01713d
