2-Methoxyethoxy functionalized triazine-cored conjugated polymers featuring hydrophilicity for enhanced visible-light photocatalytic degradation of antibiotic

Conjugated polymers (CPs) show enormous potential for photocatalytic degradation of antibiotics, but still exhibit unsatisfactory degradation rate due to the hydrophobicity. Herein, we report the designed synthesis of two visible-light-active triazine-cored CPs and their photocatalytic activities in tetracycline (TC) degradation. Interestingly, the hydrophilicity and opto-electronic properties of CPs can be readily tuned by selection of building blocks attached diverse side-chains. For CPs bearing photoactive center, the integration of 2-methoxyethoxy functional groups can prominently improve the hydrophilicity and reduce undesirable aggregation, which facilitates the adsorption of contaminants for the subsequent photodegradation reaction. Moreover, the embedded 2-methoxyethoxy moieties render the resulting CPs with narrower band gap, higher visible light-harvesting efficiency and charge carrier mobility, thus favoring the enhanced photocatalytic performance. As such, the CP involving 2-methoxyethoxy (BMTA-TAPT) has a higher photodegradation kinetic of TC, which is over 9 times the rate of the hydrophobic counterpart (TA-TAPT). The results provide a simple and effective approach for engineering high-performance polymer photocatalysts. • Visible-light-active triazine-cored CPs were designed and synthesized. • Introduction of 2-methoxyethoxy groups improved hydrophilicity, visible-light response ability and charge separation. • Hydrophilic BMTA-TAPT exhibited superior photocatalytic activity and stability. • Mechanism for photodegradation TC was elucidated.