Biomass has incredible potential as an alternative to fossil fuels for energy production that is sustainable for the future of humanity. Hydrogen evolution from photocatalytic biomass conversion not only produces valuable carbon-free energy in the form of molecular hydrogen but also provides an avenue of production for industrially relevant biomass products. This photocatalytic conversion can be realized with efficient, sustainable reaction materials (biomass) and inexhaustible sunlight as the only energy inputs. Reported herein is a general strategy and mechanism for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from biomass and biomass-derived substrates (including ethanol, glycerol, formic acid, glucose, and polysaccharides). Recent advancements in the synthesis and fundamental physical/mechanistic studies of novel photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution from biomass conversion are summarized. Also summarized are recent advancements in hydrogen evolution efficiency regarding biomass and biomass-derived substrates. Special emphasis is given to methods that utilize unprocessed biomass as a substrate or synthetic photocatalyst material, as the development of such will incur greater benefits towards a sustainable route for the evolution of hydrogen and production of chemical feedstocks.

The long lifetime of Mn²⁺ dopants (∼ms) facilitates charge separation and electron transfer in Mn²⁺ doped 1D CdS nanorods (NRs) with Pt tips (i.e., Mn:CdS-Pt NRs), which significantly enhances photocatalytic water splitting for hydrogen generation.

We developed a facile photoinduced disproportionation approach to generate radical anions of pyrrole derivatives for the reduction of aryl halides, as well as the formation of desired heterocyclic product without the addition of any photocatalysts.