Proceedings of nanoGe Fall Meeting19 (NFM19)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.nfm.2019.044
Publication date: 18th July 2019
Photoelectrochemical(PEC) water splitting has received considerable attention as a promising way for producing eco-friendly and sustainable hydrogen since it was observed by Fujishima and Honda in 1972 [1]. In the PEC water splitting, p-type semiconductors have been widely used to implement photocathodes for generating hydrogen because minority carriers in the p-type semiconductor easily move to the water interface, enabling to split water to the hydrogen. Lanthanum iron oxide (LaFeO3) is one of attractive p-type semiconductors for PEC water splitting [2,3]. It is visible light responsive with a band gap of 2.1~2.4 eV, allowing to utilize the sufficient sunlight. In addition, it has favorable energy band positions for PEC water splitting, especially, with the conduction band lying more negative of hydrogen evolution reaction potential. Furthermore, it is durable in the aqueous solution in contrast with copper oxide, which is a typical p-type semiconductor in the PEC water splitting. Hence, it is beneficial for the sustainable hydrogen production via the PEC water splitting. In this work, we fabricate the LaFeO3 photocathode by the plasma sputtering deposition, which is simple, low cost and able to yield the uniform stoichiometric film. The film is sputtered with a deposition ratio of 0.048 nm/s using the specific conditions with a base pressure below 1.0 x 10-3 Pa, a working pressure of 5 Pa and a RF power of 70 W. The post annealing process is sequentially carried out in the air to make crystalline LaFeO3 film. The as-deposited LaFeO3 film is amorphous, but it converts into the crystalline LaFeO3 by annealing process at the temperature above 550ºC. As a result, the crystalline LaFeO3 photocathodes show the improved PEC performance, while the amorphous LaFeO3 photocathodes show negligible PEC performance in the strong alkaline solution. The optimization and characterization of sputtered LaFeO3 photocathodes are also investigated. It paves the way for the development of durable PEC water splitting system for a hydrogen fuel based economy.
This work was supported by World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan.
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