TiO₂/graphene/NiFe-layered double hydroxide nanorod array photoanodes for efficient photoelectrochemical water splitting

Abstract

TiO2/graphene/NiFe-layered double hydroxide nanorod arrays were fabricated as highly efficient photoanodes for photoelectrochemical water splitting with simultaneously enhanced charge separation and water oxidation efficiency.

Promoting charge carrier utilization by integrating layered double hydroxide nanosheet arrays with porous BiVO4 photoanode for efficient photoelectrochemical water splitting

“…Loading oxygen-evolution cocatalysts (OECs) has been considered as an effective approach to accelerate the surface reaction kinetics and reduce oxygen evolution reaction (OER) barrier of semiconductor materials [7,13,19,20]. Although traditional noble metal oxides, such as IrO2 and RuO2, are considered as the most active OER electrocatalysts for OECs in PEC cells [5,14], the high cost and low stability limit their extensive applications [7].…”

“…Metal oxides acting as photoanodes for PEC light conversion, such as TiO2 [5,6], α-Fe2O3 [7][8][9][10], WO3 [11,12], have attracted wide attention because of their low cost, environment-friendliness and stability under oxidizing conditions. Among them, BiVO4 is the top performer due to its relatively small band gap, adequate conduction band edge position and moderate charge transport properties [13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

“…They may serve as promising OEC candidates for PEC water splitting. Nowadays, they have been applied to some potential photoanodes, including TiO2 [5], Fe2O3 [9], TaN3 [26], which have shown enhanced performances in both onset potentials and photocurrent densities. In addition, the LDHs are synthesized simply and grow on substrate easily in the form of nanostructure [22].…”

“…Therefore, integrating BiVO4 with LDH as composite photoanode for highly efficient PEC water splitting is still a great challenge. Moreover, many reports have shown that ingenious photoanodes with improved separation of photogenerated charge carriers can be obtained through fabricating various nanostructures (such as ordered nanorod arrays [5], porous films [13], and heterogeneous nanoarrays [27][28][29][30][31][32]). Notably, the nanostructured electrocatalysts which can be used as OECs demonstrate many special features, such as more active sites, superhydrophilic and superaerophobicity [33][34][35].…”

Sandwich-structured TiO2 inverse opal circulates slow photons for tremendous improvement in solar energy conversion efficiency

“…One of the critical bottlenecks for efficiency improvement of photoactive semiconductor is low absorbance of light. 1, 2 Significant research efforts have been made to enhance photon collection by extending absorption width through chemical doping [3][4][5] and increasing the path length of light by scattering and/or resonance. 6,7 In the past decade, photonic crystal (PC) structures have received increased attention for enhancing photochemical energy conversion by intensifying light-matter interactions without chemical modification.…”