Solution chemistry back-contact FTO/hematite interface engineering for efficient photocatalytic water oxidation

This work describes a simple yet powerful scalable solution chemistry strategy to create back-contact rich interfaces between substrates such as commercial transparent conducting fluorine-doped tin oxide coated glass (FTO) and photoactive thin films hematite for low-cost water oxidation reaction. High-resolution electron microscopy (SEM, TEM, STEM), atomic force (AFM), elemental chemical mapping (EELS, EDS) photoelectrochemical (PEC) investigations reveal that the mechanical stress, lattice mismatch, energy barrier, voids FTO at interface well short-circuit detrimental reaction electrolyte can be alleviated by engineering composition of precursor solutions, thus increasing overall efficiency these photoanodes clean sustainable generation hydrogen from PEC water-splitting. These findings are significant importance improve charge collection minimizing electron-hole recombination observed grain boundaries in mesoporous electrodes, improving scalability splitting devices.