Zhao Huihuan, Ning Xingming, Wang Ze, Du Peiyao, Zhang Rongfang, He Yaorong, Lu Xiaoquan
Key Laboratory of Bioelectrochemistry and Environmental Analysis of Gansu Province, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Northwest Normal University, Gansu 730070, PR China.
Key Laboratory of Bioelectrochemistry and Environmental Analysis of Gansu Province, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Northwest Normal University, Gansu 730070, PR China.
J Colloid Interface Sci. 2022 Jun;615:318-326. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.01.150. Epub 2022 Jan 25.
Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is an attractive strategy to convert and store of intermittent solar power into fuel energy. However, the detrimental charge recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes severely limits its efficiency. Despite electrocatalyst loading can obviously improve the PEC conversion efficiency, current systems still suffer from high recombination owing to the surface states. Herein, an interface "repairing" strategy is proposed to suppress the recombination at the semiconductor/electrocatalyst interface. NiO layer acts as an interfacial repairing layer to efficiently extract photogenerated charge carriers and eliminate the surface states via high hole-transfer kinetics rather than as a traditional electrocatalyst. As expected, the resulting repaired system yields an impressive photocurrent density of 4.58 mA cm at 1.23 V (vs. RHE), corresponding to a more than three-fold increase compared to BiVO (1.40 mA cm). Our work offers an appealing maneuver to improve the water oxidation performance for the semiconductor/electrocatalyst coupling system.
光电化学（PEC）水分解是一种将间歇性太阳能转化并存储为燃料能源的有吸引力的策略。然而，光生电子和空穴的有害电荷复合严重限制了其效率。尽管负载电催化剂可以显著提高PEC转换效率，但由于表面态的存在，当前系统仍然存在高复合率的问题。在此，我们提出了一种界面“修复”策略来抑制半导体/电催化剂界面处的复合。NiO层作为界面修复层，通过高空穴转移动力学有效地提取光生电荷载流子并消除表面态，而不是作为传统的电催化剂。正如预期的那样，所得的修复系统在1.23 V（相对于可逆氢电极）时产生了令人印象深刻的光电流密度4.58 mA cm，与BiVO（1.40 mA cm）相比增加了三倍多。我们的工作为改善半导体/电催化剂耦合系统的水氧化性能提供了一种有吸引力的策略。
