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Title: Enabling unassisted solar water splitting by iron oxide and silicon

Abstract

A solution for large-scale solar energy storage is photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. 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. 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. In conclusion, 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.

Authors:
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [4];  [3];  [5];  [1]
  1. Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA (United States)
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of Science and Technology, Hefei (China)
  3. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  4. Univ. of Science and Technology, Hefei (China)
  5. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
OSTI Identifier:
1256030
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231
Resource Type:
Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Nature Communications
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 6; Journal ID: ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
25 ENERGY STORAGE

Citation Formats

Jang, Ji-Wook, Du, Chun, Ye, Yifan, Lin, Yongjing, Yao, Xiahui, Thorne, James, Liu, Erik, McMahon, Gregory, Zhu, Junfa, Javey, Ali, Guo, Jinghua, and Wang, Dunwei. Enabling unassisted solar water splitting by iron oxide and silicon. United States: N. p., 2015. Web. doi:10.1038/ncomms8447.
Jang, Ji-Wook, Du, Chun, Ye, Yifan, Lin, Yongjing, Yao, Xiahui, Thorne, James, Liu, Erik, McMahon, Gregory, Zhu, Junfa, Javey, Ali, Guo, Jinghua, & Wang, Dunwei. Enabling unassisted solar water splitting by iron oxide and silicon. United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8447
Jang, Ji-Wook, Du, Chun, Ye, Yifan, Lin, Yongjing, Yao, Xiahui, Thorne, James, Liu, Erik, McMahon, Gregory, Zhu, Junfa, Javey, Ali, Guo, Jinghua, and Wang, Dunwei. 2015. "Enabling unassisted solar water splitting by iron oxide and silicon". United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8447. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1256030.
@article{osti_1256030,
title = {Enabling unassisted solar water splitting by iron oxide and silicon},
author = {Jang, Ji-Wook and Du, Chun and Ye, Yifan and Lin, Yongjing and Yao, Xiahui and Thorne, James and Liu, Erik and McMahon, Gregory and Zhu, Junfa and Javey, Ali and Guo, Jinghua and Wang, Dunwei},
abstractNote = {A solution for large-scale solar energy storage is photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. 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. 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. In conclusion, 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.},
doi = {10.1038/ncomms8447},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1256030}, journal = {Nature Communications},
issn = {2041-1723},
number = ,
volume = 6,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Jun 16 00:00:00 EDT 2015},
month = {Tue Jun 16 00:00:00 EDT 2015}
}

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Cited by: 400 works
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