An artificial light-harvesting system constructed from a water-soluble metal–organic barrel for photocatalytic aerobic reactions in aqueous media

Abstract

An artificial light-harvesting system constructed from a water-soluble host–guest complex can be regarded as a high-level conceptual model of its biological counterpart and can convert solar energy into chemical energy in an aqueous environment. Herein, a water-soluble metal–organic barrel Ga-tpe with twelve sulfonic acid units was obtained by subcomponent self-assembly between Ga³⁺ ions and tetra-topic ligands with tetraphenylethylene (TPE) cores. By taking advantage of host–guest interactions, cationic dye rhodamine B (RB) was constrained in the pocket of Ga-tpe to promote the Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) process for efficient photocatalytic aerobic oxidation of sulfides and cross-dehydrogenative coupling (CDC) reaction in aqueous media.