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Nano Research 2020, 13(1): 231-237 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2605-3
Research Article | Issue | Published: 27 December 2019

Room-temperature photodeposition of conformal transition metal based cocatalysts on BiVO4 for enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting

Show Author's Information Lu Wang,  Tao Zhang,  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:
cocatalyst, bismuth vanadate, photoelectrochemcial water splitting, conformal photodeposition
Topics:
Cobalt compoundsHydrogen fuelsManganese compoundsMetal complexesMetal ionsNanostructuresNickel compoundsPhotoelectrochemical cellsSolar energySolar power generationTransition metals
Cite this article:
Wang L, Zhang T, Su J, et al. Room-temperature photodeposition of conformal transition metal based cocatalysts on BiVO4 for enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting. Nano Research, 2020, 13(1): 231-237. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2605-3
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting using semiconductors offers a promising way to convert renewable solar energy to clean hydrogen fuels. However, due to the sluggish reaction kinetics of water oxidation, significant charge recombination occurred at the photoanode/electrolyte interface and cause decrease of its PEC performance. To reduce the surface recombination, we deposit different transition metal complexes on BiVO4 nanocone arrays by a versatile light driven in-situ two electrode photodeposition approach without applied bias. Conformal cobalt phosphate "Co-Pi" , nickel borate "Ni-Bi" and manganese phosphate "Mn-Pi" complexes were deposited on BiVO4 nanocone arrays to form core-shell structure photoanode, all of which lead to enhanced photoelectrochemical performance. The photocurrent of the Co-Pi/BiVO4 photoanode under front-side illumination for 5 min is increased by 4 folds comparing to that of bare BiVO4 photoanode at 0.6 V vs. RHE, reaching a hole transfer efficiency as high as 94.5% at 1.23 V vs. RHE. The proposed photodeposition strategy is simple and efficient, and can be extended to deposite cocatalyst on other semiconductors with a valence band edge located at a potential more positive than the oxidation potential of transition metal ion in the cocatalyst.


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About this article

Room-temperature photodeposition of conformal transition metal based cocatalysts on BiVO4 for enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting

Show Author's information Lu Wang, Tao Zhang, 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

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting using semiconductors offers a promising way to convert renewable solar energy to clean hydrogen fuels. However, due to the sluggish reaction kinetics of water oxidation, significant charge recombination occurred at the photoanode/electrolyte interface and cause decrease of its PEC performance. To reduce the surface recombination, we deposit different transition metal complexes on BiVO4 nanocone arrays by a versatile light driven in-situ two electrode photodeposition approach without applied bias. Conformal cobalt phosphate "Co-Pi" , nickel borate "Ni-Bi" and manganese phosphate "Mn-Pi" complexes were deposited on BiVO4 nanocone arrays to form core-shell structure photoanode, all of which lead to enhanced photoelectrochemical performance. The photocurrent of the Co-Pi/BiVO4 photoanode under front-side illumination for 5 min is increased by 4 folds comparing to that of bare BiVO4 photoanode at 0.6 V vs. RHE, reaching a hole transfer efficiency as high as 94.5% at 1.23 V vs. RHE. The proposed photodeposition strategy is simple and efficient, and can be extended to deposite cocatalyst on other semiconductors with a valence band edge located at a potential more positive than the oxidation potential of transition metal ion in the cocatalyst.

Keywords: cocatalyst, bismuth vanadate, photoelectrochemcial water splitting, conformal photodeposition

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Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 27 August 2019
Revised: 12 December 2019
Accepted: 14 December 2019
Published: 27 December 2019
Issue date: January 2020

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Basic Science Center Program for Ordered Energy Conversion of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51888103), the China National Key Research and Development Plan Project (No. 2018YFB1502000), and the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (No. 2019JM-400).

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