Department of Physics and Beijing Key Laboratory of Energy Conversion and Storage Materials, Beijing Normal University , Beijing, 100875, China.
Nano Lett. 2014 Jan 8;14(1):18-23. doi: 10.1021/nl402205f. Epub 2013 Dec 20.
We report the facile fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) silicon/hematite core/shell nanowire arrays decorated with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and their potential application for sunlight-driven solar water splitting. The hematite and AuNPs respectively play crucial catalytic and plasmonic photosensitization roles, while silicon absorbs visible light and generates high photocurrent. Under simulated solar light illumination, solar water splitting with remarkable efficiency is achieved with no external bias applied. Such a nanocomposite photoanode design offers great promise for unassisted sunlight-driven water oxidation, and further stability and efficiency improvements to the device will lead to exciting prospects for practical solar water splitting and artificial photosynthesis.
我们报告了一种简便的方法来制备三维（3D）硅/氧化铁核/壳纳米线阵列，该阵列上装饰有金纳米粒子（AuNPs），并将其潜在应用于阳光驱动的太阳能分解水。氧化铁和 AuNPs 分别发挥着关键的催化和等离子体敏化作用，而硅吸收可见光并产生高光电流。在模拟太阳光照射下，无需外加偏压即可实现高效的太阳能分解水。这种纳米复合光阳极设计为无需辅助的阳光驱动水氧化提供了很大的前景，并且对器件进一步的稳定性和效率的提高将为实际的太阳能分解水和人工光合作用带来令人兴奋的前景。
