Photocatalytic Hydrogen Generation from pH-Neutral Water by a Flexible Tri-Component Composite
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Photocatalytic Hydrogen Generation from pH‑Neutral Water by a Flexible Tri‑Component Composite R. Mahdi1 · Mohammed Alsultan2,3 · Amar Al‑Keisy1,3 · Gerhard F. Swiegers3 Received: 1 June 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In this work we examine the benefits of using carefully designed tri-component composites to fabricate flexible photocathode electrodes for photo-electrocatalytic hydrogen ( H2) generation from neutral pH water. We report H 2 production by a tri-component composite thin-film containing CuO nanowires (CuO NW), reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and polypyrrole (PPy). At − 1.1 V vs Ag/AgCl in 0.5 M Na2SO4 (pH 6.8) with a hole-scavenger, under weak light illumination, he photocurrent performance was fivefold greater than the bi-component CuO–rGO control having the same absolute quantities of CuO and rGO. It was 30-fold greater than the CuO–PPy control. The tri-component CuO–rGO–PPy thin film therefore displayed an active H2-generating capacity compare with its bi-component analogues. It, effectively, exploited the advantages of each component, including the suppression of charge recombination afforded by the rGO, and the photocorrosion protection, immobilization and flexibility afforded by the PPy, whilst avoiding their disadvantages. Graphic Abstract Entry for the Table of contents
Keywords Copper oxide nanowire · Reduce graphene oxide · Polypyrrole · Photocathode · Water reduction catalysis Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-020-03427-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Mohammed Alsultan [email protected]
2
Department of Basic Education, University of Mosul, Mosul 41002, Iraq
* Amar Al‑Keisy [email protected]
3
Intelligent Polymer Research Institute and ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
1
Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials Research Center, University of Technology, Baghdad 10066, Iraq
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1 Introduction At present, there is great interest in developing environmentally-friendly, alternative sources of energy that do not produce CO 2 emissions. One potential approach involves catalytically splitting water using sunlight. This is typically done in a photoelectrochemical cell (PEC), with hydrogen (H2) gas generated at the cathode (via the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER)) and oxygen ( O2) gas produced at the anode (via the oxygen evolution reaction (OER)) [1–7]. Hydrogen is a clean, non-polluting energy source that also has a high energy density (122 kJ/g) (vs. fossil oil and its products of around 40 kJ/g) [8–10]. In order to develop this approach, strategic materials engineering is needed to develop photocatalysts that are cheap, activated by visible light, environmentally-friendly, long-lived and energy-efficient in their facilitation of the HER or OER. One material that is
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