Issue 13, 2013

Visible light driven overall water splitting using cocatalyst/BiVO4 photoanode with minimized bias

Abstract

BiVO4 and many other semiconductor materials are ideal visible light responsive semiconductors, but are insufficient for overall water splitting. Upon loading water oxidation cocatalyst, for example Co-borate (denoted as CoBi) used here, onto BiVO4 photoanode, it is found that not only the onset potential is negatively shifted but also the photocurrent and the stability are significantly improved. And more importantly, PEC overall water splitting to H2 and O2 is realized using CoBi/BiVO4 as photoanode with a rather low applied bias (less than 0.3 V vs. counter electrode) in a two-electrode scheme, while at least 0.6 V is needed for bare BiVO4. This work demonstrates the practical possibility of achieving overall water splitting using the PEC strategy under a bias as low as the theoretical minimum, which is the difference between the flat band and proton reduction potential for a photoanode thermodynamically insufficient for water reduction. As long as the water oxidation overpotential is overcome with an efficient cocatalyst, the applied bias of the whole system is only used for that thermodynamically required for the proton reduction.

Graphical abstract: Visible light driven overall water splitting using cocatalyst/BiVO4 photoanode with minimized bias

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
12 Dec 2012
Accepted
22 Jan 2013
First published
25 Jan 2013

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2013,15, 4589-4595

Visible light driven overall water splitting using cocatalyst/BiVO4 photoanode with minimized bias

C. Ding, J. Shi, D. Wang, Z. Wang, N. Wang, G. Liu, F. Xiong and C. Li, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2013, 15, 4589 DOI: 10.1039/C3CP50295C

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