Scalable Photocatalytic Microlens Arrays Imprinted in Carbon Dot based Photoresists

Regulated photocatalysis by integration of optics presents a powerful avenue to enable high efficiency energy conversion
under the fluctuating conditions of natural sunlight. Yet inefficiency arises when the concentrated photonic energy and
the nanoscale catalytic sites mismatch in dimensions. To address this, a hybrid photocatalytic microlens array is designed
and manufactured with the scalable imprinting technology. Photocatalytic carbon dots (CDs) are uniformly integrated into
the imprinted plano-convex microlens array. The convex microlens focuses the incident light onto the flat back surface, where the photocatalytic reactions take place at the nanoscale CD sites. We achieved a reduction of 64% on the illumination lower threshold to initiate photochemical reactions. Further integration of the photocatalytic microlens arrays
with a continuous-flow photochemical reactor results in a 78-fold increase in pollutant removal efficiency compared to batch conditions. This approach pave a hybrid pathway for the design of high-efficiency photochemical reactors.