Gallium nitride nanowire as a linker of molybdenum sulfides and silicon for photoelectrocatalytic water splitting

Baowen Zhou, Xianghua Kong, Srinivas Vanka, Sheng Chu, Pegah Ghamari, Yichen Wang, Nick Pant, Ishiang Shih, Hong Guo () and Zetian Mi ()
Additional contact information
Baowen Zhou: McGill University
Xianghua Kong: McGill University
Srinivas Vanka: McGill University
Sheng Chu: McGill University
Pegah Ghamari: McGill University
Yichen Wang: McGill University
Nick Pant: McGill University
Ishiang Shih: McGill University
Hong Guo: McGill University
Zetian Mi: McGill University

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract The combination of earth-abundant catalysts and semiconductors, for example, molybdenum sulfides and planar silicon, presents a promising avenue for the large-scale conversion of solar energy to hydrogen. The inferior interface between molybdenum sulfides and planar silicon, however, severely suppresses charge carrier extraction, thus limiting the performance. Here, we demonstrate that defect-free gallium nitride nanowire is ideally used as a linker of planar silicon and molybdenum sulfides to produce a high-quality shell-core heterostructure. Theoretical calculations revealed that the unique electronic interaction and the excellent geometric-matching structure between gallium nitride and molybdenum sulfides enabled an ideal electron-migration channel for high charge carrier extraction efficiency, leading to outstanding performance. A benchmarking current density of 40 ± 1 mA cm−2 at 0 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode, the highest value ever reported for a planar silicon electrode without noble metals, and a large onset potential of +0.4 V were achieved under standard one-sun illumination.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06140-1 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:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-06140-1

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06140-1

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 ().