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Research Article | Open Access

Oxygen vacancy-mediated WO3 phase junction to steering photogenerated charge separation for enhanced water splitting

Huimin LI1,3, Qianqian SHEN1,3( ), Han ZHANG1,3, Jiaqi GAO1,3, Husheng JIA1,3,4, Xuguang LIU1, Qi LI5, Jinbo XUE1,2( )
Key Laboratory of Interface Science and Engineering in Advanced Materials of Ministry of Education, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China
Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
College of Materials Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China
Shanxi-Zheda Institute of Advanced Materials and Chemical Engineering, Taiyuan 030032, China
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, China
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Graphical Abstract

Abstract

Effective charge separation and transfer is deemed to be the contributing factor to achieve high photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting performance on photoelectrodes. Building a phase junction structure with controllable phase transition of WO3 can further improve the photocatalytic performance. In this work, we realized the transition from orthorhombic to monoclinic by regulating the annealing temperatures, and constructed an orthorhombic–monoclinic WO3 (o-WO3/m-WO3) phase junction. The formation of oxygen vacancies causes an imbalance of the charge distribution in the crystal structure, which changes the W–O bond length and bond angle, accelerating the phase transition. As expected, an optimum PEC activity was achieved over the o-WO3/m-WO3 phase junction in WO3-450 photoelectrode, yielding the maximum O2 evolution rate roughly 32 times higher than that of pure WO3-250 without any sacrificial agents under visible light irradiation. The enhancement of catalytic activity is attributed to the atomically smooth interface with a highly matched lattice and robust built-in electric field around the phase junction, which leads to a less-defective and abrupt interface and provides a smooth interfacial charge separation and transfer path, leading to improved charge separation and transfer efficiency and a great enhancement in photocatalytic activity. This work strikes out on new paths in the formation of an oxygen vacancy-induced phase transition and provides new ideas for the design of catalysts.

Keywords

phase transitiontungsten oxidelattice mismatchdensity functional theory (DFT)photoelectrocatalytic water splitting

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Journal of Advanced Ceramics
Volume 11 Issue 12,
December 2022
Pages 1873-1888
DOI: 10.1007/s40145-022-0653-8
Cite this article:
LI H, SHEN Q, ZHANG H, et al. Oxygen vacancy-mediated WO3 phase junction to steering photogenerated charge separation for enhanced water splitting. Journal of Advanced Ceramics, 2022, 11(12): 1873-1888. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40145-022-0653-8

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Received: 28 June 2022
Revised: 11 August 2022
Accepted: 29 August 2022
Published: 29 November 2022
© The Author(s) 2022.

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