It is challenging for polymer photocatalysts to achieve high photocatalytic performance under visible light due to their weak light absorption in visible light region. Herein, a universal strategy for boosting the photocatalytic activity of donor–acceptor (D–A) conjugated polymer photocatalysts upon visible light irradiation by inserting a π-spacer of thiophene unit between the electron donors and acceptors to form a D–π–A molecular structure is reported. The introduction of thiophene unit with narrow band gap can enhance the conjugation degree of the polymer chains and extend the light absorption range. Meanwhile, the introduction of thiophene spacer through ternary copolymerization also enables the controllability on the chemical structure of the resulting D–π–A polymers by altering the feed ratio between the electron donors and acceptors. The optimized D–π–A copolymer photocatalyst shows an impressive hydrogen evolution rate (HER) of 78.4 mmol h^–1 g^–1 under visible light irradiation, and the HER could be further improved to 127.9 mmol h^–1 g^–1 under UV–vis light irradiation by loading 1 wt% Pt co-catalyst. More importantly, this strategy can also be extended to other polymeric photocatalysts with different donor and acceptor units, demonstrating the universality for enhancing the photocatalytic activity of polymeric photocatalysts.

中文翻译：

---

通过在供体和受体之间插入窄带隙间隔物来提高聚合物光催化剂在可见光下析氢活性的通用策略

由于聚合物光催化剂在可见光区域的光吸收较弱，因此在可见光下实现高光催化性能具有挑战性。在此，一种普遍的策略是通过在电子供体和受体之间插入噻吩单元的 π-间隔子以形成 D-π-A 分子，从而在可见光照射下提高供体-受体 (D-A) 共轭聚合物光催化剂的光催化活性。结构被报告。窄禁带噻吩单元的引入可以提高聚合物链的共轭度，扩大光吸收范围。同时，通过三元共聚引入噻吩间隔基还可以通过改变电子给体和受体之间的进料比来控制所得 D-π-A 聚合物的化学结构。^{在可见光照射下–1}  g ^–1，负载1 wt% Pt助催化剂，在紫外-可见光照射下HER可进一步提高至127.9 mmol h ^–1  g ^{–1 。}更重要的是，该策略还可以扩展到具有不同供体和受体单元的其他聚合物光催化剂，证明了提高聚合物光催化剂光催化活性的普遍性。