Enhancing Photocatalytic Performance via In Situ Growth of Cadmium Sulfide on Fiber-Based Coordination Polymers

The development of specific photoactive units with selective reactivity at state-of-the-art advances for photocatalytic reactions is an ideal candidate to achieve chemical transformations. In this work, the typical photoactive unit of cadmium sulfide (CdS) was integrated into the fiber-based manganese coordination polymer (Mn-CP, 1) and polyacrylonitrile (PAN) to construct the CdS@1/PAN composites through electrospinning and an in situ strategy. The continuous and consistent fibrous structure of 1/PAN membranes was prepared by combining the different contents of 1 and PAN with electrospinning techniques. Furthermore, the photoactive unit CdS was introduced onto the surface of the ordered premade building unit 1/PAN to generate the CdS@1/PAN composites by the in situ mode, which possessed a fiber-based shape with good controllability and periodic dispersion of active sites. Moreover, the well-defined CdS@1/PAN composites were employed as photocatalysts to explore the oxidative hydroxylation reaction under blue-light irradiation. The results demonstrated that CdS_0.093@1/PAN with well-dispersed and regularly controllable active sites provided well-defined platforms to execute the photocatalytic oxidative hydroxylation of arylboronic acids to aryl phenols as the desired products with superior activity.