Gil-Rostra Jorge, Castillo-Seoane Javier, Guo Qian, Jorge Sobrido Ana Belén, González-Elipe Agustín R, Borrás Ana
Nanotechnology on Surfaces and Plasma Lab. Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Sevilla (CSIC-US). Avenida de Américo Vespucio, 49, 41092 Sevilla, Spain.
School of Engineering and eMaterials Science, Queen Mary University of London, E1 4NS, London, UK.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2023 Feb 10;15(7):9250-62. doi: 10.1021/acsami.2c19868.
A common approach for the photoelectrochemical (PEC) splitting of water relies on the application of WO porous electrodes sensitized with BiVO acting as a visible photoanode semiconductor. In this work, we propose a new architecture of photoelectrodes consisting of supported multishell nanotubes (NTs) fabricated by a soft-template approach. These NTs are formed by a concentric layered structure of indium tin oxide (ITO), WO, and BiVO, together with a final thin layer of cobalt phosphate (CoPi) co-catalyst. The photoelectrode manufacturing procedure is easily implementable at a large scale and successively combines the thermal evaporation of single crystalline organic nanowires (ONWs), the magnetron sputtering deposition of ITO and WO, and the solution dripping and electrochemical deposition of, respectively, BiVO and CoPi, plus the annealing in air under mild conditions. The obtained NT electrodes depict a large electrochemically active surface and outperform the efficiency of equivalent planar-layered electrodes by more than one order of magnitude. A thorough electrochemical analysis of the electrodes illuminated with blue and solar lights demonstrates that the characteristics of the WO/BiVO Schottky barrier heterojunction control the NT electrode efficiency, which depended on the BiVO outer layer thickness and the incorporation of the CoPi electrocatalyst. These results support the high potential of the proposed soft-template methodology for the large-area fabrication of highly efficient multishell ITO/WO/BiVO/CoPi NT electrodes for the PEC splitting of water.
一种常见的光电化学（PEC）水分解方法依赖于应用用BiVO敏化的WO多孔电极作为可见光阴极半导体。在这项工作中，我们提出了一种由软模板法制备的负载型多壳纳米管（NTs）组成的光电极新结构。这些NTs由氧化铟锡（ITO）、WO和BiVO的同心层状结构以及最后一层磷酸钴（CoPi）共催化剂组成。光电极制造过程易于大规模实施，依次结合了单晶有机纳米线（ONWs）的热蒸发、ITO和WO的磁控溅射沉积，以及BiVO和CoPi的溶液滴注和电化学沉积，再加上在温和条件下的空气退火。所获得的NTs电极具有较大的电化学活性表面积，其效率比等效的平面层状电极高出一个多数量级。对用蓝光和太阳光照射的电极进行的全面电化学分析表明，WO/BiVO肖特基势垒异质结的特性控制着NTs电极的效率，这取决于BiVO外层厚度和CoPi电催化剂的掺入。这些结果支持了所提出的软模板方法在大面积制备用于PEC水分解的高效多壳ITO/WO/BiVO/CoPi NT电极方面的巨大潜力。
