No abstract

A metal-free flexible protonated g-C 3 N 4 /carbon dots (pCN/C dots) photoanode has been fabricated on polyethylene terephtalate (PET) /indium tin oxide (ITO) substrate by a facile room temperature electrophoretic approach. The pCN/C dots photoanode gives an increased anodic photocurrent of 38 mA/cm 2 at 1 V vs. RHE under illumination with simulated one sun conditions, which is about 3 times higher than that of the pristine pCN. The improved photoresponse of the pCN/C dots film was found as a result from enhanced light absorption and decreased charge transfer resistance with the incorporation of C dots. The successful deposition of pCN/C dots on flexible conductive PET substrate holds promising application in multiple electronic and photoelectronic devices.Artificial photosynthesis enables the generation of large-scale, clean and sustainable energy through solar water splitting and other chemical fuel syntheses. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is regarded as one of the most promising artificial photosynthesis approaches for solar fuel production. [1,2] Due to their superior properties of transparency and conductivity, transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layers (such as In 2 O 3 , ZnO or SnO 2 films) deposited on glass are widely used as substrates for PEC and photovoltaic devices. [3][4][5] However, the expensive, fragile and inflexible glass-TCO substrate nature has inhibited the development of large scale roll-to-roll solar cell. One alternative approach is the taking polymer foils as substrate physical supporter substrates instead of glass. PET coated with an ITO-layer possess mechanical flexibility, optical clarity, light weight, and low fabrication cost, which is highly desirable in large-area production as well as the ultimate goal of solar hydrogen production industrialization.It is wide interest in the search for robust and metal-free visible-light-driven photocatalysts, which are of great economic compatible for practical use. Graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) has attracted great attention due to its moderate band gap of 2.7 eV, good chemical stability under light irradiation, low cost, and non-toxicity. It has been considered as a good photocatalyst for solar fuel conversion and pollutant degradation. [6] However, there are limited reports on its PEC properties as its PEC application research has been hindered by the significant challenge of depositing a uniform CN films on substrates. Several methods have been developed to prepare CN films, such as spin-coating, [7] drop-casting [8] or thermal vapor condensation. [9,10] All these methods of depositing the CN powders on substrates shows low photocurrent (several mA/cm 2 ) or need high temperature. Unlike glass-based photoelectrode, the plastic-based photoelectrode need low-temperature sintering technique below 150 8C due to the decomposition of the plastic at high temperature, so in this work, a room temperature electrophoretic method has been employed to deposit g-CN onto PET substrate. For the first step, we prepared protonated g-CN (pCN) by t...

Gold nanoparticles (∼24 nm) were successfully loaded on the surface of BiVO4 nanopyramidal arrays by simple electrostatic self-assembly approach. By decorating gold nanoparticles on the surface of BiVO4 films, The photocurrent of as-prepared Au/BiVO4 photoanode increased from around 0.42 mA/cm2 for pristine BiVO4 to nearly 0.93 mA/cm2 at 1.23 vs. RHE under AM 1.5 illumination. The improved photoresponse of the Au/BiVO4 was found as a result from higher carrier generation and enhanced charge separation with the decoration of Au nanoparticles. The successful deposition provide a new route for desigining plasmonic photoanode and offers better understanding the photochemistry of noble metal-complex oxide heterostructures for photoelectrichemical water splitting.

No abstract