Bottom-up Engineering of Hematite Nanowire Heterostructures for Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting
PengYi Tang a b, HaiBing Xie a, LiJuan Han c, Carles Ros b, Marti Biset Peiro b, José Ramón Galán-Mascarós c d, Teresa Andreu b, Joan Ramon Morante b, Jordi Arbiol a d
a Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), CSIC and BIST, Campus UAB, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
b Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC), Jardins de les Dones de Negre 1, Sant Adria del Besos, Spain
c Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), Avinguda dels Països Catalans, 16, Tarragona, Spain
d Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Spain, Passeig Lluis Companys 23, Barcelona, Spain
Materials for Sustainable Development Conference (MATSUS)
Proceedings of nanoGe Fall Meeting 2018 (NFM18)
S1 Solar Fuel 18
Torremolinos, Spain, 2018 October 22nd - 26th
Organizers: Shannon Boettcher and Kevin Sivula
Oral, PengYi Tang, presentation 035
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.nfm.2018.035
Publication date: 6th July 2018

The development of technologies for H2 production or CO2 reduction strongly relies on an abundant supply of protons and electrons liberated by water oxidation. [1-2] Therefore, photoelectrochemical (PEC) water oxidation is an important anodic half-cell process in the development of a sustainable artificial solar fuel system. In the PEC devices design, coupling water oxidation catalysts with active photoanode materials has become the most promising methodology, since the attachment/integration of the catalyst on the semiconductor light absorbers could kinetically facilitate interfacial charge transfer reactions.

In this contribution, we have fabricated ITO/Fe2O3/Fe2TiO5/FeNiOOH multi-layers nanowire heterostructures via combination of sputtering, hydrothermal, ALD, photo-electrodepositon methods for photoelectrochemical (PEC) oxygen evolution application. Structural, spectroscopic and electrochemical investigations disclose that the origin of the superior catalytic performance is owing to the interfacial coupling effect of ITO underlayer (Sn doping and conductivity promoter), ultrathin Fe2TiO5 coating (Ti doping, energetics and surface state density modulation) and FeNiOOH eletrocatalyst (varying surface state energy level). [2]

Meanwhile, an alternative earth-abundant CoFe prussian blue analogues (CoFe PBA) is incorporated in Fe2O3/Fe2TiO5 core-shell type II heterojunction nanowires as photoanodes for PEC water oxidation. The observed photocurrent is improved from 0.12 mA cm-2 to 1.25 mA cm-2 at 1.23 V vs. RHE under illumination by involvement of ultrathin Fe2TiO5 layer and CoFe PBA WOCs coating. Further investigation of the PEC mechanisms via photoelectrochemical impedance spectroscopy unveils that the enhanced PEC performance is attributed to the enhanced charge transfer efficiency owing to the tuned energy level and density of surface state. [3-4]

References

[1] Félix Urbain, Pengyi Tang, Nina M. Carretero, Teresa Andreu, Luís G. Gerling, Cristóbal Voz, Jordi Arbiol, Joan R. Morante, Energy & Environmental Science, 10, 2256-2266 (2017).

[2] Pengyi Tang, HaiBing Xie, Carles Ros, LiJuan Han, Martí Biset-Peiró, Yongmin He, Wesley Kramer, Alejandro Perez-Rodriguez, Edgardo Saucedo, Jose Galan-Mascaros, Teresa Andreu, Joan R. Morante, Jordi Arbiol, Energy & Environmental Science, 10, 2124-2136 (2017).

[3] Lijuan Han, Pengyi Tang, Alvaro Reyes-Carmona, Barbara Rodriguez-Garcia, Mabel Torrens, Joan Ramon Morante, Jordi Arbiol, Jose Ramon Galan-Mascaros, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 138, 16037-16045 (2016).

[4] PengYi Tang, LiJuan Han, Paul Paciok, Marti Biset Peiro, Hong-Chu Du, Xian-Kui Wei, Lei Jin, Hai-Bing Xie, Qin Shi, Teresa Andreu, Joan Ramon Morante, Mónica Lira-Cantú, Marc Heggen, Rafal E. Dunin-Borkowski, José Ramón Galán-Mascarós, Jordi Arbiol, to be submitted.

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