Proceedings of nanoGe September Meeting 2017 (NFM17)
Publication date: 20th June 2016
Solar water splitting devices, which can directly produce hydrogen with only sunlight and water as inputs, are recognized as a promising way to overcome the intermittent nature of renewable energy resources. Besides efficient conversion of incident photons to sufficient photovoltage and photocurrent to split water, such devices face many challenges e.g. catalysis, ion transport, gas separation, etc. . Here, we present a device architecture which keeps the produced oxygen and hydrogen separate and provides low ion transport overpotential at the same time. The basis for this device architecture is a silicon membrane structure with micropores. In 1 M NaOH, a transport overpotential of 10 mV at 10 mA/cm2 was achieved while still 97 % of the surface area consists of silicon, which can be used for light absorption. Even if 99.7 % is used for light absorption, this overpotential is still only 100 mV. This was achieved by fabricating a very thin (< 40 μm) silicon substrate and introducing small pores (3 μm diameter) in it. The pitch of these holes was varied between 14 and 229 μm to create different porosities. Stability is achieved by completely protecting the silicon from the electrolyte using metallic conductors on the outer surfaces, and silicon nitride inside the pores. Earth abundant catalysts are applied on the front- and backside to further reduce the total overpotential for water splitting. Preliminary results also show the possibility of adding a second semiconductor material to create a tandem device, which shows that this device has promise for performing unassisted water splitting.
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