Operando NMR spectroscopic analysis of proton transfer in heterogeneous photocatalytic reactions.

ABSTRACT: Proton transfer (PT) processes in solid-liquid phases play central roles throughout chemistry, biology and materials science. Identification of PT routes deep into the realistic catalytic process is experimentally challenging, thus leaving a gap in our understanding. Here we demonstrate an approach using operando nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy that allows to quantitatively describe the complex species dynamics of generated H2/HD gases and liquid intermediates in pmol resolution during photocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In this system, the effective protons for HER are mainly from H2O, and CH3OH evidently serves as an outstanding sacrificial agent reacting with holes, further supported by our density functional theory calculations. This results rule out controv

SUBMITTER: Wang XL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4915033 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature