Incorporation of carbazole and boron-containing dye into conjugated microporous polymers with significant aerobic oxidative photocatalysis

Abstract

Carbazole-based conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) as a new type of advanced porous material have created tremendous research curiosities in the area of photocatalysis. Besides, introducing boron-containing dyes into the CMPs framework was rare but will be rather promising due to their unique properties, including strong electron-accepting capability, efficient catalytic behaviour, significant absorption coefficient and high quantum. Herein, we rationally designed and prepared two new CMPs, i.e. Cz-BF2-CMP and Cz-BPh2-CMP with the combination of carbazole and boron-containing dye as electron donor and acceptor motifs, respectively. Due to the efficient D-A effect between carbazole and boron-dye which not only accelerated the interfacial charge transfer efficiency but also improved the separation capability of photogenerated electron-hole pairs, both CMPs exhibited excellent photocatalytic performances in organic transformations such as green synthesis of benzimidazole in aqueous solution and aerobic oxidation of thioether in EtOH.

Keywords

• Carbazole
• Boron-containing dye
• Conjugated microporous polymers
• Aerobic oxidative photocatalysis