TY - JOUR
T1 - Combining heterointerface/surface oxygen vacancies engineering of bismuth oxide to synergistically improve its solar water splitting performance
AU - Shaddad, Maged N.
AU - Alharthi, Abdulrahman I.
AU - Alotaibi, Mshari A.
AU - Alanazi, Abdulaziz A.
AU - Arunachalam, Prabhakarn
AU - Al-Mayouf, Abdullah M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023
PY - 2023/11/20
Y1 - 2023/11/20
N2 - Solar-powered photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is recognized as a strategy for addressing fossil resource and global warming concerns. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate for the first time a facile method to fabricate dendritic nanostructured (DN) Bi:Bi2O3 heterointerface engineering junctions that possess abundant surface oxygen vacancies (OVs, DN Bi:Bi2O3-OVs/FTO), with outstanding PEC performance. The surface OVs serve as shallow donors and active reaction sites, whereas the Bi-metal bridges are used for fast electron transport. Furthermore, surface OVs can enhance the surface features of Bi:Bi2O3 heterointerfaces and boost their electrical conductivity and donor density. This greatly enhances electrolyte ion and electron mobility, resulting in rapid water oxidation reactions at the Bi:Bi2O3/electrolyte interfaces. By combining the Bi:Bi2O3 heterointerface junction and surface OVs, we are able to create an effective photoanode with 95 % charge injection efficiency, applied bias photon-to-current efficiency (ABPE) of 0.112 %, and a photocurrent response of 0.334 mA.cm−2 at 1.23 V vs. the reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), which represents improvements of about 4.5 and 10 folds over that of pure DN Bi2O3 photoanode. It is possible to construct a variety of unique nanostructured electrodes with adjustable optical and electronic properties to be used in solar cells, energy storage, and PEC applications.
AB - Solar-powered photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is recognized as a strategy for addressing fossil resource and global warming concerns. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate for the first time a facile method to fabricate dendritic nanostructured (DN) Bi:Bi2O3 heterointerface engineering junctions that possess abundant surface oxygen vacancies (OVs, DN Bi:Bi2O3-OVs/FTO), with outstanding PEC performance. The surface OVs serve as shallow donors and active reaction sites, whereas the Bi-metal bridges are used for fast electron transport. Furthermore, surface OVs can enhance the surface features of Bi:Bi2O3 heterointerfaces and boost their electrical conductivity and donor density. This greatly enhances electrolyte ion and electron mobility, resulting in rapid water oxidation reactions at the Bi:Bi2O3/electrolyte interfaces. By combining the Bi:Bi2O3 heterointerface junction and surface OVs, we are able to create an effective photoanode with 95 % charge injection efficiency, applied bias photon-to-current efficiency (ABPE) of 0.112 %, and a photocurrent response of 0.334 mA.cm−2 at 1.23 V vs. the reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), which represents improvements of about 4.5 and 10 folds over that of pure DN Bi2O3 photoanode. It is possible to construct a variety of unique nanostructured electrodes with adjustable optical and electronic properties to be used in solar cells, energy storage, and PEC applications.
KW - DN BiO photoanode
KW - Heterointerface engineering
KW - Solar water splitting
KW - Surface oxygen vacancies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85172027806&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.electacta.2023.143217
DO - 10.1016/j.electacta.2023.143217
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85172027806
SN - 0013-4686
VL - 469
JO - Electrochimica Acta
JF - Electrochimica Acta
M1 - 143217
ER -
