Visible light-driven efficient overall water splitting using p-type metal-nitride nanowire arrays

M. G. Kibria, F. A. Chowdhury, S. Zhao, B. AlOtaibi, M. L. Trudeau, H. Guo and Z. Mi ()
Additional contact information
M. G. Kibria: McGill University
F. A. Chowdhury: McGill University
S. Zhao: McGill University
B. AlOtaibi: McGill University
M. L. Trudeau: Science des Matériaux, IREQ, Hydro-Québec
H. Guo: Centre for the Physics of Materials, McGill University
Z. Mi: McGill University

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Solar water splitting for hydrogen generation can be a potential source of renewable energy for the future. Here we show that efficient and stable stoichiometric dissociation of water into hydrogen and oxygen can be achieved under visible light by eradicating the potential barrier on nonpolar surfaces of indium gallium nitride nanowires through controlled p-type dopant incorporation. An apparent quantum efficiency of ∼12.3% is achieved for overall neutral (pH∼7.0) water splitting under visible light illumination (400–475 nm). Moreover, using a double-band p-type gallium nitride/indium gallium nitride nanowire heterostructure, we show a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of ∼1.8% under concentrated sunlight. The dominant effect of near-surface band structure in transforming the photocatalytic performance is elucidated. The stability and efficiency of this recyclable, wafer-level nanoscale metal-nitride photocatalyst in neutral water demonstrates their potential use for large-scale solar-fuel conversion.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7797 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7797

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7797

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().