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Research Article

Construction of novel P-Si/TiO2/HfO2/MoS2/Pt hetero-photocathode for enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting

Jiaru Li1, Jiayu Bai1, Songjie Hu1, Wenyu Yuan3, Yuyu Bu2( ), Xiaohui Guo1( )
Key Lab of Synthetic and Natural Functional Molecule Chemistry of Ministry of Education, Shaanxi Key Laboratory for Carbon Neutral Technology, The College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069, China
Key Lab of Wide Band-Gap Semiconductor Materials and Devices, School of Microelectronics, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China
Key Lab of Macromolecular Science of Shaanxi Province, Key Laboratory of Applied Surface and Colloid Chemistry, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710062, China
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Graphical Abstract

A kind of advanced p-Si/TiO2/HfO2/MoS2/Pt photocathode system is firstly fabricated through a stepwise deposition method. The introduction of an ultra-thin HfO2 film not only effectively mitigates the corrosion of the silicon substrate, but also exhibits enhanced carrier transfer and suppressed carrier recombination.

Abstract

Photoelectrochemical devices have been developed to enable the conversion of solar energy. However, their commercial potential is restricted by the limited stability of the materials employed. To enhance the stability of photocathode and its solar water splitting performance, a P-Si/TiO2/HfO2/MoS2/Pt composite photocathode is developed in this work. The novel TiO2/HfO2/MoS2 serial nanostructure provides excellent stability of the photocathode, and optimizes the interface energy barrier to further facilitate the transfer process of photogenerated carriers within the photocathode. The best P-Si/TiO2/HfO2/MoS2/Pt photocathode demonstrates an initial potential of 0.5 V (vs. RHE) and a photocurrent density of −29 mA/cm2 at 0 V (vs. RHE). Through intensity modulated photocurrent spectroscopy and photoluminescence test, it is known that the enhanced water splitting performance is attributed to the optimized carrier transfer property. These findings provide a feasible strategy for the stability and photon quantum efficiency enhancement of silicon-based photocathode devices.

Keywords

photoelectrochemicalwater splittingstabilitysurface/interface engineeringHfO2 layer

Electronic Supplementary Material

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Nano Research
Volume 17 Issue 5,
May 2024
Pages 4428-4436
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-023-6299-1
Cite this article:
Li J, Bai J, Hu S, et al. Construction of novel P-Si/TiO2/HfO2/MoS2/Pt hetero-photocathode for enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting. Nano Research, 2024, 17(5): 4428-4436. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6299-1
Topics:
Photocathodes

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Received: 12 September 2023
Revised: 13 October 2023
Accepted: 30 October 2023
Published: 01 December 2023
© Tsinghua University Press 2023
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