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Department of Chemistry, Fergusson College, Autonomous Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune 411 004, India

In the present study, we designed and fabricated cost-effective miniaturized versatile electrochemical deposition cell, which is found to be at par performance as compared with conventional electrodeposition techniques. A case study is being undertaken for the electrodeposition of varied thickness of bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) films on FTO glass substrates. X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns confirms the structural perovskite phase of BiFeO3 (BFO). UV-Visible absorption spectra and Tauc plot of BFO estimates the direct band gap which lies between 1.9 to 2.1 eV. The properties of bismuth ferrite crystal system such as electronic band structure and density of states (DOS) are investigated theoretically. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting application is carried out to investigate the best performance of BFO films of varied thickness. The best performer (BFO15) working electrode yields a photocurrent density of ~ 35 µA/cm2 at 0.2 V vs RHE under visible LED (light intensity of 100mW/cm2) in neutral 0.5 M Na2SO4 electrolyte. Incident photon to current conversion (IPCE) measurements, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and Mott-Schottky characteristics confirms the best performance of BFO15 photocathode film.