Electron-deficient naphthalene diimide directed metal halides with visible light driven photocatalytic properties

Abstract

Naphthalene diimides (NDIs) are a family of the organic dyes with excellent electron accepting abilities, which have attracted great interest due to their widespread applications in many fields. In this work, a protonated NDI derivative was used with different metal halides to construct two inorganic-organic hybrid compounds, (H2DPMNI)·(Cu4I6)·(CH3CN) (1), and (H2DPMNI)·(Pb2I6)·(DMF) (2) where DPMNI is N,N′-bis(4-pyridylmethyl)-1,4,5,8-naphthalene diimide. These compounds were characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, elemental analysis, IR spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. The structure analysis revealed that the compounds 1 and 2 were built from one-dimensional metal halides attached by protonated DPMNI via C-H···anion and anion-π interactions. Due to the facilitated electron transfers between one-dimensional metal halides and protonated DPMNI components, compounds 1 and 2 exhibited excellent photocatalytic activities for degrading RhB in the presence of visible light radiation. This work provides a new way for the design and synthesis of diverse new types of photocatalytic hybrid materials.