Developing efficient artificial photocatalysts for the biomimetic photocatalytic production of molecular materials, including medicines and clean energy carriers, remains a fundamentally and technologically essential challenge. Hydrogen peroxide is widely used in chemical synthesis, medical disinfection, and clean energy. However, the current industrial production, predominantly by anthraquinone oxidation, suffers from hefty energy penalties and toxic byproducts. Herein, we report the efficient photocatalytic production of hydrogen peroxide by protonation-induced dispersible porous polymers with good charge-carrier transport properties. Significant photocatalytic hydrogen peroxide generation occurs under ambient conditions at an unprecedented rate of 23.7 mmol g–1 h–1 and an apparent quantum efficiency of 11.3% at 450 nm. Combined simulations and spectroscopies indicate that sub-picosecond ultrafast electron “localization” from both free carriers and exciton states at the catalytic reaction centers underlie the remarkable photocatalytic performance of the dispersible porous polymers.
The geometry of Hamiltonian’s eigenstates is encoded in the quantum geometric tensor (QGT), containing both the Berry curvature, central to the description of topological matter, and the quantum metric. So far, the full QGT has been measured only in Hermitian systems, where the role of the quantum metric is mostly limited to corrections. On the contrary, in non-Hermitian systems, and, in particular, near exceptional points, the quantum metric is expected to diverge and to often play a dominant role, for example, in the enhanced sensing and in wave packet dynamics. In this Letter, we report the first experimental measurement of the quantum metric in a non-Hermitian system. The specific platform under study is an organic microcavity with exciton-polariton eigenstates, which demonstrate exceptional points. We measure the quantum metric’s divergence, and we determine the scaling exponent , which is in agreement with the theoretical description of second-order exceptional points.