An iron complex based on polypyridyl ligands was synthesized and characterized. The Electrochemisty of this complex showed that it exhibits two reduction peaks and two oxidation peaks in which the former assigned to FeIII/FeII and FeII/FeI, respectively. The performance of electrocatalytic proton reduction of the complex was examined via using different strength acids (acetic acid, trifluoroacetic acid and tetrafluoroboric acid) as proton sources. From the cyclic voltammograms, we can conclude that the protons catalyzed by different strength acids possess one common feature, that when 1 equivalent of proton source is added, the first reduction peak current intensity increases. The subsequent addition of proton source led to increase slowly of the current intensity with the increase of proton concentration until the effect it tended to stabilize. When tetrafluoroboric acid was used as the proton source, two new reduction peaks appeared, and the peak current of the new reduction peak increased with the increase of the normal concentration of proton source. This shows that when strong acid is used as a proton source, the effect of the electrocatalytic hydrogen production is more obvious.

Acidity and accessibility of three commercial zeolites (HY, HMOR, Hβ) were characterized by using in situ FTIR spectroscopy with pyridine (Py), 2,6-dimethylpyridine (DMPy) and 2,6-di-tertbutylpyridine (DTPy) as the probing molecules. The results indicate that the surface acid density of HY molecular sieve is the highest, and there are abundant strong B acid centers, strong L acid centers, and many weak B acid centers. However, the surface acid density of HMOR and Hβ is low, and it is mainly the strong B acid center and the strong L acid center. The accessibility index of B -acid center is calculated by changing the hydroxyl group of Si-Al bridge. The results show that the order of accessibility of macromolecule probes to Br-nsted acid sites in these three type of zeolites is HMOR＞Hβ＞HY.