Isoreticular Preparation of Tetraphenylethylene‐based Multicomponent Metallacages towards Light‐Driven Hydrogen Production

Abstract

Multicomponent metallacages can integrate the functions of their different building blocks to achieve synergetic effects for advanced applications. Herein, based on metal‐coordination‐driven self‐assembly, we report the preparation of a series of isoreticular tetraphenylethylene‐based metallacages, which are well characterized by multinuclear NMR, ESI‐TOF‐MS and single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction techniques. The suitable integration of photosensitizing tetraphenylethylene units as faces and Re catalytic complexes as the pillars into a single metallacage offers a high photocatalytic hydrogen production rate of 1707 μmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹, which is one of the highest values among reported metallacages. Femtosecond transient absorption and DFT calculations reveal that the metallacage can serve as a platform for the precise and organized arrangement of the two building blocks, enabling efficient and directional electron transfer for highly efficient photocatalytic performance. This study provides a general strategy to integrate multifunctional ligands into a certain metallacage to improve the efficiency of photocatalytic hydrogen production, which will guide the future design of metallacages towards photocatalysis.