Designing Organic Photosensitisers for Photoactivated Water Oxidation

• Applicant: Dr. Laura Dura
• Subject Area: Physical Chemistry of Molecules, Liquids and Interfaces, Biophysical Chemistry ; Inorganic Molecular Chemistry - Synthesis and Characterisation ; Organic Molecular Chemistry - Synthesis and Characterisation
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 328552131

• Final Report Year: 2019

Final Report Abstract

Water oxidation or OER for short using light as an energy source is considered as one of the dream reactions of todays´ chemists. However, here-to-fore scientists are missing suitable, readily available and inexpensive dyes to drive the reaction. Addressing this need I designed and studied 10 organic BODIPY dyes of which 2 proved able to sustain OER upon irradiation with visible light. with up to 181 turn overs. Studying the homogeneous systems I assembled further, I proved that oxygen was produced catalyticly in a phosphate buffer at pH7 without addition of a sacrificial agent. And consequently, with this project I was able to provide the first example of a homogeneous system for OER with an organic dye as light harvesting component as well as describe 5 new BODIPY dyes.