Vertically aligned ZnO/In 2 S 3 core/shell heterostructures with enhanced photoelectrochemical properties
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Vertically aligned ZnO/In2S3 core/shell heterostructures with enhanced photoelectrochemical properties Xiaobing Li1 · Jinzhan Su1 · Liejin Guo1 Received: 23 July 2020 / Accepted: 29 July 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract ZnO/In2S3 core/shell heterostructures were successfully synthesized through a successive ion layer absorption and reaction (SILAR) method. The thickness of In2S3 shells were adjusted from 6.8 to 36.1 nm by adopting different SILAR cycles. Compared with pure ZnO NRs, the ZnO/In2S3 core/shell NRs presented better light absorption, higher photocurrent density and enhanced incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE). Both the highest photocurrent density and IPCE of obtained ZnO/In2S3 core/shell heterostructures were almost three times higher than that of pristine ZnO NRs. The PL spectra, i–t curves, EIS plots, Mott–Schottky plots and ECSA curves were also recorded to investigate the influence of the In2S3 deposition on the photoelectrochemical (PEC) performance of ZnO NRs. The In2S3 nanoparticles deposited on the surface of ZnO NRs enhanced the light absorption of the heterostructures and facilitated the separation of photogenerated electron– hole pairs, eventually resulting in the enhanced PEC performance. The preparation of ZnO/In2S3 core/shell heterostructures by the simple SILAR method would increase the possibility for its practical application of photoelectrodes in the future.
1 Introduction Recently, more and more nanomaterial studies focus on photoanode materials for photoelectrochemical water splitting applications [1–10]. Metal oxide semiconductors such as TiO2, ZnO and W O3 are widely used as photoelectrodes for the hydrogen production due to their low cost, non-toxic and good stability [11–17]. Among those oxide semiconductors, ZnO nanorods (NRs) and nanowires (NWs) are the typical materials used for PEC water splitting with the advantage of nanostructure and facile synthesis approach [18–22]. However, pure ZnO NRs or NWs as wide bandgap semiconductor only absorb ultraviolet light which limiting their photoelectric conversion efficiency for water splitting. Many efforts Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-020-04139-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Jinzhan Su [email protected] * Liejin Guo lj‑[email protected] 1
International Research Center for Renewable Energy, State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, 28 West Xianning Road, Xi’an 710049, China
have been devoted to the improvement of light absorption and PEC properties of ZnO, which are nanostructure optimization [23], doping [24], and sensitization [25] etc. [26–28]. Furthermore, fabricating heterojunction with a low bandgap semiconductor is another effective way to enhance the utilization of solar light and to facilitate the separation of photon-generated carriers [29–32]. Generally, metal sulfide
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