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Metal-organic decomposition is an easy way to fabricate BiVO 4 (BVO) photoanodes; however, it often experiences a reproducibility issue. Here, the aging duration of a vanadium precursor solution, vanadyl acetylacetonate in methanol, is identified as a factor that profoundly affects reproducibility. Substantial changes in structural, optical, and electrical properties of BVO films are observed upon varying aging time of vanadium precursor solutions, which subsequently impacts photoelectrochemical (PEC) water oxidation and sulfite oxidation reactions. With the optimum number of aging days (3 d), some deficiency of oxygen is observed, which is accompanied by an increase in carrier concentration and a reduced charge transfer resistance in the PEC device, which produces the highest PEC performance that is comparable to the state-of-the-art undoped BVO photoanodes. The findings point to the importance of understanding solution chemistry and demonstrate that utilization of the understanding of fine adjustment of the composition of BVO films can produce highly reproducible and efficient BiVO 4 photoanodes.

Sb2Se3, a quasi-1D structured binary chalcogenide, has great potential as a solar cell light absorber owing to its anisotropic carrier transport and benign grain boundaries when the absorber layer is...

A tandem photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting device for solar hydrogen production consists of two light absorbers with different bandgaps. It is important to enhance the performance of both cells to achieve...

Cu 2 S is a promising solar energy conversion material due to its suitable optical properties, high elemental earth abundance, and nontoxicity. In addition to the challenge of multiple stable secondary phases, the short minority carrier diffusion length poses an obstacle to its practical application. This work addresses the issue by synthesizing nanostructured Cu 2 S thin films, which enables increased charge carrier collection. A simple solution-processing method involving the preparation of CuCl and CuCl 2 molecular inks in a thiol-amine solvent mixture followed by spin coating and low-temperature annealing was used to obtain phase-pure nanostructured (nanoplate and nanoparticle) Cu 2 S thin films. The photocathode based on the nanoplate Cu 2 S (FTO/Au/Cu 2 S/CdS/TiO 2 /RuO x ) reveals enhanced charge carrier collection and improved photoelectrochemical water-splitting performance compared to the photocathode based on the non-nanostructured Cu 2 S thin film reported previously. A photocurrent density of 3.0 mA cm −2 at −0.2 versus a reversible hydrogen electrode (V RHE ) with only 100 nm thickness of a nanoplate Cu 2 S layer and an onset potential of 0.43 V RHE were obtained. This work provides a simple, cost-effective, and high-throughput method to prepare phase-pure nanostructured Cu 2 S thin films for scalable solar hydrogen production.