Effective charge separation in photoelectrochemical water splitting: a review from advanced evaluation methods to materials design

Abstract

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting has garnered significant interest in recent years for alleviating and addressing concerns regarding the energy security and environmental pollution. The total efficiency of PEC water splitting...

Surface Engineering of BiVO4 Photoanodes for Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting: Recent Advances

“…[14,15,16,17] Among them, the PEC technique is particularly promising as it delivers a direct pathway to transform solar photons absorbed by a semiconductor into electrons (e À ) and holes (h + ) that can drive the reduction and oxidation (redox) reactions on the cathode and the anode of the electrolyser, correspondingly. [18,19,20,21] Through H 2 and/or oxygen evolution reactions (HER/OER), photons of solar irradiation are converted into chemical fuels with the help of semiconducting materials with low overpotentials and acceptable band energy levels. [22,23,24] Developing competitive n-type semiconducting materials for water splitting electrode materials has been widely researched in past decades due to the kinetic and thermodynamic challenges associated with the OER.…”