Dibenzothiophene-S,S-dioxide-containing conjugated polymer with hydrogen evolution rate up to 147 mmol g−1 h−1

Molecular engineering in donor–acceptor conjugated polymers is currently one of the most successful and popular strategy to prepare high performance photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution. In this contribution, we have designed and synthesized two novel conjugated polymers with tailored donor–acceptor structures based on dibenzothiophene-S,S-dioxide and thiophene derivatives, which exhibited tunable band gaps and adjustable charge separation efficiencies. As a result, PDBTSO-T showed an outstanding hydrogen evolution rate (HER) of 1.47 mmol h−1 by DMF exfoliation under UV−vis region with Pt cocatalyst in ascorbic acid aqueous solution at 10 mg level, which is among the top performance for photocatalysis conversion reported so far. Very excitingly, when the photocatalysis tests were subjected to natural sunlight irradiation, an impressive HER of ~27 mL (107 mmol g−1 h−1) was achieved after 0.5 h of illumination (12:30 pm − 13:00 pm) on a consistently sunny day under identical reaction conditions.