Enabling unassisted solar water splitting by iron oxide and silicon

Ji-Wook Jang, Chun Du, Yifan Ye, Yongjing Lin, Xiahui Yao, James Thorne, Erik Liu, Gregory McMahon, Junfa Zhu, Ali Javey, Jinghua Guo and Dunwei Wang ()
Additional contact information
Ji-Wook Jang: Merkert Chemistry Center, Boston College
Chun Du: Merkert Chemistry Center, Boston College
Yifan Ye: Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Yongjing Lin: University of California
Xiahui Yao: Merkert Chemistry Center, Boston College
James Thorne: Merkert Chemistry Center, Boston College
Erik Liu: Merkert Chemistry Center, Boston College
Gregory McMahon: Merkert Chemistry Center, Boston College
Junfa Zhu: National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China
Ali Javey: University of California
Jinghua Guo: Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Dunwei Wang: Merkert Chemistry Center, Boston College

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-5

Abstract: Abstract Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting promises a solution to the problem of large-scale solar energy storage. However, its development has been impeded by the poor performance of photoanodes, particularly in their capability for photovoltage generation. Many examples employing photovoltaic modules to correct the deficiency for unassisted solar water splitting have been reported to-date. Here we show that, by using the prototypical photoanode material of haematite as a study tool, structural disorders on or near the surfaces are important causes of the low photovoltages. We develop a facile re-growth strategy to reduce surface disorders and as a consequence, a turn-on voltage of 0.45 V (versus reversible hydrogen electrode) is achieved. This result permits us to construct a photoelectrochemical device with a haematite photoanode and Si photocathode to split water at an overall efficiency of 0.91%, with NiFeOx and TiO2/Pt overlayers, respectively.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8447 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_ncomms8447

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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8447

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 ().