A Novel Strategy to Construct Artificial Light-Harvesting System Based on Aggregation- Induced Emission Surfactants for Photocatalysis

摘要

Herein, a novel strategy to construct artificial light-harvesting systems (LHSs)based on micelles is proposed. Two efficient artificial LHSs are fabricated in waterbased on tetraphenylethene (TPE) modified surfactants (TPE-SAA). TPE-SAA canself-assemble into spherical micelles in an aqueous solution through noncovalentinteractions. Due to the aggregation-induced emission effect of the TPE unit,TPE-SAA micelles exhibit strong emission and directly act as donors to achievethe energy transfer process. Firstly, two fluorescent dyes (4,7-bis(thien-2-yl)-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (DBT) and amphoteric sulforhodamine 101 (SR101)), which arelocalized in the hydrophobic interior and positively charged surface of TPE-SAArespectively, are chosen as energy acceptors to realize the two-step sequentialenergy transfer process with high efficiency. In addition, energy transfer canalso take place from TPE-SAA to SR101, and bright white-light emission with aCIE coordinate of (0.31, 0.33) can be achieved by adjusting the ratio of donor toacceptor. Furthermore, to utilize the harvested energy, the micelle-based artificialLHSs are employed to promote the aerobic cross-dehydrogenative coupling reaction.Moreover, the dehalogenation reaction of α-bromoacetophenone can alsobe catalyzed by the TPE-SAA+DBT+SR101 system in water.