Novel NiO-modified Cu 2 O photocathode for photoelectrochemical water splitting
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Novel NiO‑modified Cu2O photocathode for photoelectrochemical water splitting Guangmin Li1,2 · Ling Wei2 · Yang Yang1 Received: 6 February 2020 / Accepted: 23 March 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract A novel ITO/NiO/Cu2O structure served as photocathodes was applied in photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting for the first time. The NiO integration is found to slightly ameliorate the crystalline structure of C u2O. PEC measurements showed that NiO-modified Cu2O photocathodes can deliver a higher PEC performance, as the photocurrent density was up to − 1.68 mA/cm2 at − 0.6 V versus RHE under simulated AM 1.5G illumination, which is 2.8 times higher than that of nude one. The enhanced PEC performance may come from the improved charge separation and migration properties of NiO modification. Keywords Cu2O · NiO modification · Water splitting · Semiconductors · Thin films
1 Introduction Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting has been a favorable, renewable method of hydrogen production during the past years [1]. To satisfy the global energy demands, the materials used should be non-toxicity, earth-abundant, and low-cost fabrication processes. Many active semiconductor metal oxides photoelectrodes have been investigated for PEC water splitting [2–5], among which Cu2O is the candidate that meets these demands while also produces impressive PEC performance [6]. Cu2O is an attractive p-type oxide with a direct bandgap of 2.0–2.4 eV, and it could theoretically deliver photocurrent of − 14.7 mA/cm2 and solar to hydrogen conversion efficiency of 18% for water splitting [7]. Kazunari Domen et al. revealed that C u 2O-based photocathodes demonstrated stability for more than 1900 h [8]. Liu et al. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-03491-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Guangmin Li [email protected] 1
College of Science, Tianjin Chengjian University, Tianjin 300384, People’s Republic of China
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Building Green Functional Materials and School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin Chengjian University, Tianjin 300384, China
2
[9] reported that CaBi6O10/ Cu2O/ NiOOH heterojunction structure may deliver higher PEC performance compared with nude Cu2O because of the broader light absorption spectrum, and the improved photo-generated carriers separation. Nanoscale Cu2O-based structures including Cu2O nanowires/ nanosheets [10, 11], Cu2O nano p–n junction [12], porous C u2O networks [13], yolk-shelled C u2O mesocrystals [14] also demonstrate attractive photocatalytic performance. Grätzel et al. [15] developed an innovative structure of Cu2O NW arrays/ZnO:Al/TiO2/RuOX, which can deliver high photocurrent densities of 10 mA/cm2 and stable operation beyond 50 h. The PEC performance and its related structures were are given in Table 1 (Supporting Information T1). Despite great progress has been ach
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