The electrocatalytic oxidation of water coupled to the reduction of carbon dioxide, to make carbon based products, or the reduction of protons to provide hydrogen, offers a sustainable route to generating useful fuels.

Shell-isolated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SHINERS) is applied to the study of a state-of-the-art water oxidation electrocatalyst, IrOx, during oxygen evolution.

Polymer photocatalysts are a synthetically diverse class of materials that can be used for the production of solar fuels such as H 2 , but the underlying mechanisms by which they operate are poorly understood. Time-resolved vibrational spectroscopy provides a powerful structure-specific probe of photogenerated species. Here we report the use of time-resolved resonance Raman (TR 3 ) spectroscopy to study the formation of polaron pairs and electron polarons in one of the most active linear polymer photocatalysts for H 2 production, poly(dibenzo-[b,d]thiophene sulfone), P10. We identify that polaron-pair formation prior to thermalization of the initially generated excited states is an important pathway for the generation of long-lived photoelectrons.

To understand the mechanisms of a water oxidation on materials such as hematite it is important that accurate measurements and models of the interfacial fields at the semiconductor liquid junction...