Lattice Defect-Enhanced Hydrogen Production in Nanostructured Hematite-Based Photoelectrochemical Device

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• 作者：Peng Wang ; Degao Wang ; Jun Lin ; Xiaolong Li ; Cheng Peng ; Xingyu Gao ; Qing Huang ; Jianqiang Wang ; Hongjie Xu ; Chunhai Fan
• 刊名：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
• 出版年：2012
• 出版时间：April 25, 2012
• 年：2012
• 卷：4
• 期：4
• 页码：2295-2302
• 全文大小：497K
• 年卷期：v.4,no.4(April 25, 2012)
• ISSN：1944-8252

文摘

Nanostructured hematite photoanodes have been intensively studied in photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting for sustainable hydrogen production. Whereas many previous efforts have been focused on doping elements in nanostructured hematite (伪-Fe₂O₃), we herein demonstrated an alternative approach to enhance the PEC performance by exploiting intrinsic nanostructuring properties of hematite. We found that the introduction of lattice defects effectively decreased the flatband potential and increased the charge transport mobility of nanostructured hematite, hence enhance the light harvest for more efficient hydrogen production via PEC. The nanostructured hematite photoanodes with lattice defects yielded water-splitting photocurrent density of 1.2 mA/cm² at 1.6 V vs reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), which excelled defect-free ones by approximately 1.5 folds. This study thus provides a new strategy for finely tuning properties of nanostructured hematite photoanodes and enhancing the water-splitting ability of PEC.

Keywords:

nanostructured hematite; lattice defect; water splitting; photoelectrochemical; hydrogen; light harvest