Photoelectrode Membrane Assemblies with Transparent Conductive Gas Diffusion Layers for Solar Fuel Production
Kevin Sivula a
a Institut des Sciences et Ingénierie Chimiques, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
Materials for Sustainable Development Conference (MATSUS)
Proceedings of MATSUS Fall 2023 Conference (MATSUSFall23)
#MATSF - Advanced materials for the production of direct solar-driven fuels and chemicals
Torremolinos, Spain, 2023 October 16th - 20th
Organizers: Salvador Eslava and Sixto Gimenez Julia
Invited Speaker, Kevin Sivula, presentation 075
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsus.2023.075
Publication date: 18th July 2023

Gas diffusion electrodes are essential components of common fuel and electrolysis cells that use gas phase reactants and products, but are typically made from graphitic carbon or metallic materials, which do not allow light transmittance, and thus limit the development of photoelectrode membrane assemblies for gas-phase solar fuel production. In this presentation, the application of solar H2 production from humid air is motivated and the simple and scalable preparation of transparent gas-diffusion layers using F-doped SnO2 (FTO) coated SiO2 interconnected fiber felt substrates is introduced[1]. The resulting substrates have a porosity of 90 %, a roughness factor of 15.8 and a Young’s Modulus of 0.2 GPa. A sheet resistivity of 20 ± 3 Ω sq−1 and a loss of incident light of 41% at an illumination wavelength of 550 nm is found with FTO coating. The application of various semiconductors on the substrates was established including Fe2O3 (chemical bath deposition), CuSCN and Cu2O[2] (electrodeposition ), and semiconducting polymers[3] (dip coating ) and the liquid-phase photoelectrochemical performance commensurate with flat FTO substrates was confirmed. Finally, gas phase H2 production was demonstrated with a polymer semiconductor photocathode membrane assembly at 1-Sun photocurrent density on the order of 1 mA cm–2 and Faradaic efficiency of 40%.

 

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