Amberlite-Integrated Resorcinol–Formaldehyde Resins for Photocatalytic Generation of Hydrogen Peroxide

Photocatalytic production of H2O2 from water and from O2 by sunlight is an attractive strategy for liquid solar fuel production. The resorcinol–formaldehyde (RF) semiconducting resins are promising photocatalysts for H2O2 generation. However, the RF resins consist of large spherical particles with small surface areas (∼1 m2 g–1) owing to slow polymerization. In the present work, we synthesized RF resins in the presence of powdered Amberlite (AL) cation-exchange resins under the high-temperature hydrothermal conditions. This procedure produced small AL-integrated RF (RF@AL) resin particles with enlarged surface areas (∼62 m2 g–1) because the large numbers of electrophilic styrene–divinylbenzene moieties produced many polymerization nuclei. The RF@AL resins efficiently catalyzed water oxidation and O2 reduction and generated 1.3 times as much H2O2 as the pristine RF, with the apparent quantum yield (ΦAQY) at 420 nm being more than 10%.