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...

A liquid junction photoelectrochemical (PEC) solar cell based on p-type methylammonium lead iodide (p-MeNH3PbI3) perovskite with a large open-circuit voltage is developed. MeNH3PbI3 perovskite is readily soluble or decomposed in many common solvents. However, the solvent dichloromethane (CH2Cl2) can be employed to form stable liquid junctions. These were characterized with photoelectrochemical ...

The semiconductor properties important in the design of photocatalysts required for a photosynthetic system, e.g., a photoelectrochemical cell to split water to hydrogen and oxygen, have largely been taken to be the band gap energy, Eg, and the band-edge locations, Ec and Ev (usually with considerations of factors affecting stability). These affect the amount of solar energy absorbed in the mat...

Bi2WO6 nanosheet modified TiO2 nanotube arrays were synthesized by an anodization method combined with sequential chemical bath deposition for enhancement of the photoelectrochemical detection performance. The structures, morphologies and elemental compositions of the nanotube arrays were characterized with X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectrometry. Bi...

Well-defined CdS nanograin-sensitized one-dimensional (1D) Zr:α-Fe2O3 nanostructured arrays with enhanced photoelectrochemical performance are synthesized directly on F-doped SnO2 (FTO) using the hydrothermal method. Owing predominantly to the appropriate photogenerated electron-hole separation and charge collection in 1D Zr:α-Fe2O3 nanorods, hydrothermally deposited CdS/1D Zr:α-Fe2O3 samples e...

Competitive hydrogen evolution and multiple proton-coupled electron transfer reactions limit photoelectrochemical CO2 reduction in aqueous electrolyte. Here, oxygen-terminated lightly boron-doped diamond (BDDL) thin films were synthesized as a semiconductor electron source to accelerate CO2 reduction. However, BDDL alone could not stabilize the intermediates of CO2 reduction, yielding a negligi...

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is a promising route for solar energy harvesting and storage, but it has been highly limited by the performance of the semiconductor photoelectrodes. Herein, we report a small molecular amine-mediated solvothermal method for synthesizing CdS nanorods. The obtained CdS nanorods are hydrophilic and can be easily dispersed in water. Furthermore, the small...

The efficiency of an operating photoelectrochemical solar-fuelsgenerator system is determined by the system design, the properties and morphology of the system’s components, and the operational conditions. We used a previously developed model comprising of i) the detailed balance limit to describe the currentpotential performance of the photoabsorber component, and ii) the detailed multi-physic...

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 ...

Inverse opal (IO) films with mesoporous structures hold promise as high-performance electrodes for various photoelectrochemical devices because of their high specific area as well as their fully connected pore structure. A great challenge to their use is obtaining an intact film of mesoscale colloidal crystals as a template. Here, using the plate-sliding coating method coupled with hot air flow...