Boosting efficiency in light-driven water splitting by synchronizing reaction and transport processes through dynamic irradiation

This work elaborates the effect of dynamic irradiation and enhanced mass transport on light-driven molecular water oxidation to counteract catalyst deactivation. It highlights the importance of overall reaction design to overcome limiting factors in artificial photosynthesis reactions. Systematic investigation of a homogenous three component ruthenium-based water oxidation system revealed significant potential to enhance the overall catalytic efficiency by synchronizing the timescales of photoreaction and mass transport in a capillary flow reactor. The overall activity could be improved by a factor of more than 10 with respect to the turnover number and a factor of 21 referring to the external energy efficiency by applying low irradiation intensities and high flow rates.