Nanostructure-Preserved Hematite Thin Film for Efficient Solar Water Splitting

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Jae Young Kim ; Duck Hyun Youn ; Ju Hun Kim ; Hyun Gyu Kim ; Jae Sung Lee
• 刊名：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：July 1, 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：7
• 期：25
• 页码：14123-14129
• 全文大小：424K
• ISSN：1944-8252

文摘

High-temperature annealing above 700 掳C improves the activity of photoelectrochemical water oxidation by hematite photoanodes by increasing its crystallinity. Yet, it brings severe agglomeration of nanostructured hematite thin films and deteriorates electrical conductivity of the transparent conducting oxide (TCO) substrate. We report here that the nanostructure of the hematite and the conductivity of TCO could be preserved, while the high crystallinity is attained, by hybrid microwave annealing (HMA) utilizing a graphite susceptor for efficient microwave absorption. Thus, the hematite thin-film photoanodes treated by HMA record 2 times higher water oxidation photocurrents compared to a conventional thermal-annealed photoanode. The enhanced performance can be attributed to the synergistic effect of a smaller feature size of nanostructure-preserved hematite and a good electrical conductivity of TCO. The method could be generally applied to the fabrication of efficient photoelectrodes with small feature sizes and high crystallinity, which have been mutually conflicting requirements with conventional thermal annealing processes.