State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy, 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian 116023 (China) http://www.canli.dicp.ac.cn.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2014 Jul 7;53(28):7295-9. doi: 10.1002/anie.201404697. Epub 2014 May 30.
Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is an ideal approach for renewable solar fuel production. One of the major problems is that narrow bandgap semiconductors, such as tantalum nitride, though possessing desirable band alignment for water splitting, suffer from poor photostability for water oxidation. For the first time it is shown that the presence of a ferrihydrite layer permits sustainable water oxidation at the tantalum nitride photoanode for at least 6 h with a benchmark photocurrent over 5 mA cm(-2) , whereas the bare photoanode rapidly degrades within minutes. The remarkably enhanced photostability stems from the ferrihydrite, which acts as a hole-storage layer. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that it can be a general strategy for protecting narrow bandgap semiconductors against photocorrosion in solar water splitting.
光电化学（PEC）水分解是一种可再生太阳能燃料生产的理想方法。一个主要问题是，尽管氮化钽等窄带隙半导体具有用于水分解的理想能带排列，但它们在水氧化方面的光稳定性较差。首次表明，存在水铁矿层可使氮化钽光阳极在至少 6 小时内可持续进行水氧化，基准光电流超过 5 mA·cm(-2) ，而裸露的光阳极在几分钟内迅速降解。这种显著增强的光稳定性源于水铁矿，它起到空穴存储层的作用。此外，这项工作表明，它可以是一种通用策略，用于保护窄带隙半导体在太阳能水分解中免受光腐蚀。
