Quantum efficiency (QE) is a defining parameter to rank the efficiency of a photocatalyst. The QE is governed by the kinetics of recombination and transfer processes of photogenerated charge carriers along with the sequence in which these events occur. However, there are no experimental techniques able to determine the sequence (i.e., series, parallel, or combination of both) of these charge transport events and directly determine the QE from charge transport information and vice versa. To address these gaps, here we report a semi-empirical circuit model to determine the sequence of charge transport events and propose a set of hypotheses to discriminate the deciding role of recombination and charge transfer in predicting the QE in a photocatalytic process. By testing with literature data for photocatalytic water splitting, we demonstrate that this model is able to predict QE when the percentage of recombination is known and the sequence of charge transport events when QE is known.

量子效率 (QE) 是衡量光催化剂效率的一个定义参数。QE 受光生载流子的重组和转移过程的动力学以及这些事件发生的顺序控制。然而，没有实验技术能够确定这些电荷传输事件的顺序（即串联、并联或两者的组合）并直接根据电荷传输信息确定 QE，反之亦然。为了解决这些差距，我们在这里报告了一个半经验电路模型来确定电荷传输事件的顺序，并提出了一组假设来区分重组和电荷转移在预测光催化过程中的 QE 中的决定性作用。通过对光催化水分解的文献数据进行测试，