Publication date: 15th December 2014
A photoelectrochemical cell (PEC) using semiconducting materials is a promising route for directly converting sun light into storable chemical fuel, hydrogen, via water-splitting. A silicon photocathode was shown to be attractive for acheiving a high efficiency of solar-to-hydrogen conversion since it has a small band gap (Eg=1.1 eV) allowing for absorbing a large portion of solar spectrum. However, ultrahigh-purity crystalline silicon (c-Si) with 100-200 µm thicknesses is costly for commercial applications. Here, we show that a 20-µm-thin c-Si, which suffers normally from serious surface recombination and limited light absorption, can be successfully utilized for photoelectrical water-splitting. To address these hurdles, we have designed the nanostructured photocathode, in which the antireflective nanoholes (NHs) was integrated with the immobilized Pt nanoparticles (NPs). Our Pt NPs/SiNHs-integrated 20-µm-thin photocathode significantly improved the photoelectrocatalytic kinetics for H2 production owing to the enhanced light absorption and the effective suppression of surface recombination. Highly improved photocurrent (23 mA/cm2 at 0 V vs. RHE) was resulted, which is comparable to that obtained from the typical thickness (100-200 µm) of c-Si wafers.
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