High Surface Area Transparent Conducting Oxide Electrodes with a Customizable Device Architecture

Abstract

Herein, we report the development of optically transparent high surface area electrodes (HSEs) made of indium tin oxide (ITO) using a facile, template-free, scalable wet chemical synthetic approach. The transparent HSEs are electronically conductive and physically robust, with tunable electrochemically accessible roughness factors from 1 through ∼100. These transparent HSEs can serve as a broadly functionalizable scaffold ideally suited to bridge the gap between the need to minimize ionic and electronic transport lengths within a device and the need to achieve high loadings of active material per surface area (e.g. for high capacity as needed for batteries or high optical density as required for electrochromics or photovoltaics). This gap currently stands as a major hurdle for the utilization of many nanomaterials in electronic and optoelectronic devices. The synthetic approach described here for ITO is transferable to other transparent conducting oxide (TCO) materials. This is the first report of a large-pore, tunable, high surface area TCO electrode with excellent optical and conductive properties.

Design of template-stabilized active and earth-abundant oxygen evolution catalysts in acid

“…A workaround is to restrict the upper operating potential of these films by operating at low current densities and by increasing the amount of catalyst loading, which may be achieved with the use of porous electrodes. 94 – 96 Nonetheless, it is also desirable to support higher operating current densities without resorting to physical surface area augmentation. To this end, we sought to replace Mn with another structural metal that is stable in acid at high anodic potentials.…”

Top-down fabrication of fluorine-doped tin oxide nanopillar substrates for solar water splitting

“…Capacitance measurements were performed as previously described. 36 Cyclic voltammetry was performed in 0.5 M H 2 SO 4 with a platinum counter electrode and Ag/AgCl reference electrode. The electrode potential was swept from 0.05 to 0.15 V vs. reference at scan rates from 50 to 1000 mV s À1 , and the capacitive current was obtained by averaging the anodic and cathodic current at 0.10 V vs. Ag/AgCl.…”

Transparent conductive oxides in photoanodes for solar water oxidation

“…The development of nanoscale TCOs might inspire a series of applications in optoelectronics, 87 sensors, 88 photocatalysts, 89 materials sciences 90 and more. [91][92][93]…”