Tin (II) sulfide (SnS) is a promising semiconductor material for next-generation solar energy conversion due to its favorable bandgap, elemental abundance, low toxicity, and cost. A major challenge, however, lie in the open circuit voltages that are typically obtained SnS-based devices. Herein, low-cost solution-phase deposition technique used prepare SnS thin films investigate different juncti...

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is one of the most widely studied photocatalysts during the past decades due to its ability to photo-oxidize harmful chemicals in both air and water to CO2 in the presence of UV light. TiO2 also shows promise for energy applications such as water splitting [1], as well as in photochemical solar cells [2]. TiO2 use has also been extended to large scale commercial producti...

Bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) is a promising semiconductor material for the production of solar fuels via photoelectrochemical water splitting, however, it suffers from substantial recombination losses that limit its performance to well below its theoretical maximum. Here we demonstrate for the first time that the photoelectrochemical (PEC) performance of BiVO4 photoanodes can be dramatically improv...

Solar water splitting reaction to hydrogen and oxygen provides a means of energy storage as well as producing feedstock for industrial chemical synthesis, thereby reducing fossil-fuel-derived hydrogen. Oxide semiconductors have been the primary materials candidate since the major breakthrough more than 40 years ago [1, 2]. However, the general approach of using polycrystalline samples for the s...

Thermochemical energy conversion based on high-temperature materials is a third approach and generally employs two step processes with oxygen release (i.e., a reduction reaction) at high temperature and chemical water splitting at lower temperatures. [ 13–17 ] Interestingly, only very few activities aim at a combination of high temperatures and photoelectrochemical energy storage. In a theoreti...

The generation of chemical fuels via direct solar-to-fuel conversion from a fully integrated artificial photosynthetic system is an attractive approach for clean and sustainable energy, but so far there has yet to be a system that would have the acceptable efficiency, durability and can be manufactured at a reasonable cost. Here, we show that a semiconductor mesh made from all inorganic nanowir...

LaTiO(2)N photoanodes for solar water splitting were prepared by electrophoretic deposition and demonstrated the best photocurrents ever reported for this material. Further important enhancement of the performance was obtained by the use of a sputtered In(2)O(3) overlayer.

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting is a promising approach for economical and environmentally friendly hydrogen production. We report here the preparation of nanocrystalline TiO2 films by aerosol deposition (AD) and their performance as photoelectrodes for PEC water splitting. The AD deposited films, 0.5 to 4 mm in thickness, were analyzed to establish the dependence of water splitting ...

Bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) has attracted increasing attention as a photoanode for photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. It has a band gap in the visible light range (2.4−2.5 eV) and a valence band position suitable for driving water oxidation under illumination. While a number of methods have been used to make BiVO4 photoanodes, scalable thin film deposition has remained relatively underexp...