Synthesis, crystal structure and optical properties of a naphthylbisimide-Ni complex: a framework on TiO2 for visible light H2 productionElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Instrumentation, synthetic details of all compounds, other figures, tables, and X-ray structural data of Ni-PPNB. CCDC 971437. For ESI and crystallographic data in CIF or other electronic format see DOI: 10.1039/c4dt02006e

• Main Authors: Bala, Sukhen, Mondal, Indranil, Goswami, Arijit, Pal, Ujjwal, Mondal, Raju
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1477-9226; 1477-9234
• DOI: 10.1039/c4dt02006e

A novel ligand N , N ′-di-(3-(pyridin-2-yl)-1 H -pyrazole-5-carbohydrazide) naphthalene 1,4,5,8-tetracarboxylic acid bisimide (PPNB) and its nickel ( ii ) complex (Ni-PPNB) were synthesized and systematically characterized. Both the molecules show higher sensitization activity on the TiO 2 semiconducting system. These composites have interesting photophysical properties as they enable photocatalytic hydrogen production from water with a sacrificial electron donor (SED) using visible light, while neither component alone is able to do so. The photocatalysts have shown long term stability and a maximum turnover number (TON) of 7866 based on Ni-PPNB was obtained after 6 h of irradiation at a catalyst concentration of 2.5 × 10 −5 mol g −1 . Facile synthesis of a stable photoactive pyridine-pyrazole based naphthylbisimide-Ni complex on TiO 2 shows remarkably high photocatalytic H 2 production with 7886 TON from visible light induced water splitting.