Highly-efficient photocatalytic H2O2 evolution using hydrothermal carbons with donor-acceptor furan couples

Nature-inspired photosynthesis of H2O2 using sustainable catalytic materials is promising to generate high-value chemicals and solar fuels from renewable energy sources. However, existing H2O2 evolution systems still face limitations of low efficiency, high cost, and the need for sacrificial agents or organic electron donors. Herein, we report novel furan-resin-structured hydrothermal carbons (HTCs) as photocatalytic H2O2 generation catalysts by one-step hydrothermal carbonization of saccharides or biomass. The catalysts have high production efficiency (480.7 μmol gcat−1 h−1) for photocatalytic H2O2 evolution without any sacrificial agent or O2 aeration. This is one of the pioneer studies of HTCs constructed by low-bandgap furan resin comprising conjugated quinoid and aromatic furan units. The underlying mechanism is based on the π-stacked donor-acceptor (D-A) furan couples that significantly enhance the charge transfer efficiency of photogenerated electrons. The reported low-cost and easy-to-manufacture HTC photocatalysts with remarkable activity show great potential in artificial photosynthesis applications.