Long-lived excited state in covalent organic polymers revealed by time-resolved spectroscopy: Implications for photocatalytic applications

Abstract

Organic polymeric materials, composed of organic chromophores with strong light absorption, have been widely employed as heterogeneous photocatalysts in the artificial photosynthetic manner. In this study, we report covalent organic polymeric photocatalysts (COPs), which can guide directional photoinduced charge transfers operated in natural photosynthetic system. The newly-developed COPs were applied to the photocatalytic processes for the regeneration of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. From the combined investigations using timeresolved spectroscopies and DFT calculations, we revealed that the long-lived charge separation state in the COPs plays a crucial role in the photoinduced electron transport during the photocatalytic reaction.