Facile growth of β-Cu2V2O7 thin films and characterization for photoelectrochemical water oxidation

Combining Electrosynthesis with Thermolysis: A Safe/Scalable Route to Multinary Oxide Semiconductor Films

“…All other studies used sodium sulfite as a hole scavenger, while sodium formate was used instead in this study. A significant amount of dark current has been reported for β−Cu 2 V 2 O 7 photoanode in the presence of sodium sulfite at potentials above 1.1 V vs RHE [3,6,19,21] . For example, note that the photovoltammogram in the presence of sodium formate (green scan, Figure 8A) showed negligible dark current till 1.5 V vs RHE.…”

“…A significant amount of dark current has been reported for βÀ Cu 2 V 2 O 7 photoanode in the presence of sodium sulfite at potentials above 1.1 V vs RHE. [3,6,19,21] For example, note that the photovoltammogram in the presence of sodium formate (green scan, Figure 8A) showed negligible dark current till 1.5 V vs RHE. Therefore, all photocurrent density values in Table S2 were compared at 1.0 V vs RHE.…”

“…The CuÀ VÀ O compound family has generated intense interest from the PEC solar fuel community. [3][4][5][6][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] [3][4][5][6][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] with significantly higher stability in a water splitting environment relative to their binary oxide (CuO and V 2 O 5 ) constituents. Notwithstanding the intrinsic advantages of electrosynthesis as noted earlier, the use of this approach for synthesizing copper vanadate films, however, has been conspicuous by its absence.…”

“…The Cu−V−O compound family has generated intense interest from the PEC solar fuel community [3–6,13–21] . Combining V 2 O 5 and CuO in different stoichiometries generates a series of ternary copper(II) vanadates (CuV 2 O 6 , Cu 2 V 2 O 7 , Cu 3 V 2 O 8 , Cu 11 V 6 O 26 , and Cu 5 V 2 O 10 ) [3–6,13–21] with significantly higher stability in a water splitting environment relative to their binary oxide (CuO and V 2 O 5 ) constituents. Notwithstanding the intrinsic advantages of electrosynthesis as noted earlier, the use of this approach for synthesizing copper vanadate films, however, has been conspicuous by its absence.…”

Enhanced Bulk Transport in Copper Vanadate Photoanodes Identified by Combinatorial Alloying

“…BiVO 4 despite the higher ceiling for efficiency for photoanodes with broader spectral response. Among the newly identified photoactive materials, several phases in the Cu-V-O composition space have shown initial promise, [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] meriting study for their ability to be optimized by strategies within and beyond those developed for other photoanode materials.…”