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Nano Research 2019, 12(3): 575-580 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2256-9
Research Article | Issue | Published: 13 December 2018

Hierarchical growth of a novel Mn-Bi coupled BiVO4 arrays for enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting

Show Author's Information Lu Wang,  Jinzhan Su( ),  Liejin Guo( )
International Research Center for Renewable Energy,State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, School of Energy & Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University,Xi'an,710049,China;
Keywords:
bismuth vanadate, photoelectrochemistry, solar water splitting, oxygen evolution
Topics:
Binary alloysCatalystsElectric fields NanostructuresPhotoelectrochemical cellsSodium borate
Cite this article:
Wang L, Su J, Guo L. Hierarchical growth of a novel Mn-Bi coupled BiVO4 arrays for enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting. Nano Research, 2019, 12(3): 575-580. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2256-9
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Oxygen evolving catalyst (OEC) is a critical determinant for the efficiency of photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. Here we report an approach to depositing a novel manganese borate (Mn-Bi) OER catalyst on BiVO4 nanocone photoanode by photodeposition in sodium borate buffer solution containing Mn(Ⅱ) ions. Due to the spontaneous photo-electric-field-enhancement effect at the vertically oriented BiVO4 nanocone structure, spherical Mn-Bi nanoparticle was selectively photodeposited at the apex of BiVO4 nanocone. Significant improvement of photocurrent was observed for the obtained hierarchical Mn-Bi/BiVO4 photoanode which could be ascribed to enhanced hole injection efficiency, especially in low bias region. It was observed that the injection efficiency of Mn-Bi/BiVO4 is 98% which gave a photocurrent of 0.94 mA/cm2 at 1.5 V vs. RHE.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Hierarchical growth of a novel Mn-Bi coupled BiVO4 arrays for enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting

Show Author's information Lu Wang, Jinzhan Su( ), Liejin Guo( )
International Research Center for Renewable Energy,State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, School of Energy & Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University,Xi'an,710049,China;

Abstract

Oxygen evolving catalyst (OEC) is a critical determinant for the efficiency of photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. Here we report an approach to depositing a novel manganese borate (Mn-Bi) OER catalyst on BiVO4 nanocone photoanode by photodeposition in sodium borate buffer solution containing Mn(Ⅱ) ions. Due to the spontaneous photo-electric-field-enhancement effect at the vertically oriented BiVO4 nanocone structure, spherical Mn-Bi nanoparticle was selectively photodeposited at the apex of BiVO4 nanocone. Significant improvement of photocurrent was observed for the obtained hierarchical Mn-Bi/BiVO4 photoanode which could be ascribed to enhanced hole injection efficiency, especially in low bias region. It was observed that the injection efficiency of Mn-Bi/BiVO4 is 98% which gave a photocurrent of 0.94 mA/cm2 at 1.5 V vs. RHE.

Keywords: bismuth vanadate, photoelectrochemistry, solar water splitting, oxygen evolution

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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 07 September 2018
Revised: 15 November 2018
Accepted: 25 November 2018
Published: 13 December 2018
Issue date: March 2019

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

We gratefully thank the financial supports from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. xjj2016039).

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