Proceedings of nanoGe Fall Meeting 2018 (NFM18)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.nfm.2018.082
Publication date: 6th July 2018
The recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs is one of the major limiting factor in photoelectrocatalysts absorbing in the visible region of the solar spectrum. The performance as expressed by the incident photon-to-current efficiency (IPCE) strongly depends on the loading and thickness of the active material. Especially for BiVO4 the slow electron transport to the back contact facilitates charge carrier recombination and thus does not allow to exploit the entire potential of the photoabsorber. Hence, thin layers are favoured to avoid excessive charge carrier recombination, however, on the expense of a low absorption of the incident light with the result of low photocurrent output of such electrodes.
We present the development of different strategies to address the limitations evoked by charge carrier recombination of BiVO4-based photoabsorbers. The electrochemically-induced deposition of Pt-nanoparticles enhanced the contact between electrochemically deposited BiVO4 films and fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) electrodes which showed significantly lower recombination rates during frontside illumination1. Modifications of BiVO4 films by doping with different metals showed enhancements of the IPCE by more than 30% at 1.2 V vs. RHE for Mo/Zn and Mo/B doped systems during light driven oxygen evolution reaction (OER)1. High-throughput screening showed highest improvement of photocurrents by a factor of 10 for Bi(V-Mo-X)O4 material libraries as compared to a BiVO4 reference material2. To further improve the performance of BiVO4-based photoabsorbers a systematic characterisation of different co-deposited OER catalysts onto pre-modified Mo-doped BiVO4 films was performed revealing the necessity for an optimal deposition technique and loading of the co-catalyst in question such as electrodeposition, photoassisted electrodeposition and photodeposition. Moreover, an alternative technique for simple electrode preparation and modification based on an air brush-type spray-coater system is proposed which allows to easily tune the layer thickness of photoabsorber films and is able to deposit gradients of additives or OER co-catalysts. Using the spray-coating technique in combination with an optical scanning droplet cell allowed for a quick and easy but precise tuning of the investigated systems for further enhancing the performance of BiVO4-based photoabsorbers.
References
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R. Gutkowski, C. Khare, F. Conzuelo, Y. Kayran, A. Ludwig, W. Schuhmann, Energy Environ. Sci., 2017, 10, 1213–1221.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the financial support of the DFG within the framework of the SPP1613 (SCHU929/12-1 and 12-2).
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