Enhanced Photocatalytic Performance Depending on Morphology of Bismuth Vanadate Thin Film Synthesized by Pulsed Laser Deposition

Abstract

We have fabricated high quality bismuth vanadate (BiVO) polycrystalline thin films as photoanodes by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) without a postannealing process. The structure of the grown films is the photocatalytically active phase of scheelite-monoclinic BiVO which was obtained by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The change of surface morphology for the BIVO thin films depending on growth temperature during synthesis has been observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and its influence on water splitting performance was investigated. The current density of the BiVO film grown on a glass substrate covered with fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) at 230 °C was as high as 3.0 mA/cm at 1.23 V versus the potential of the reversible hydrogen electrode (V) under AM 1.5G illumination, which is the highest value so far in previously reported BiVO films grown by physical vapor deposition (PVD) methods. We expect that doping of transition metal or decoration of oxygen evolution catalyst (OEC) in our BiVO film might further enhance the performance.

Rational Design of a Coupled Confronting Z‐Scheme System Toward Photocatalytic Refractory Pollutant Degradation and Water Splitting Reaction

“…ratios in B, LB, BC, and BCL are calculated to be 3.51, 1.26, 8.86, and 1.92, respectively. No unwanted vanadate phase is present in B prepared at a relatively lower temperature . The XRD pattern is enclosed by (003), (006), (009), (015), (012), (110), and (113) crystal planes of L and can be assigned to ICDD card no.…”

Pulsed Laser Deposition of Bismuth Vanadate Thin Films—The Effect of Oxygen Pressure on the Morphology, Composition, and Photoelectrochemical Performance

“…The sputtering conditions during PLD strongly affect the properties of the resulting layer [17]. It was shown that pulsed laser deposited BiVO 4 films on FTO substrates obtained at 230 • C can generate high photocurrents equal to about 3 mA cm −2 , but only in the hole-scavenger containing electrolyte [18]. Other authors showed that the high temperature (500 • C) in the deposition chamber makes the growth of BiVO 4 crystallites anisotropic [19].…”

Photoelectrochemical Device Designs toward Practical Solar Water Splitting: A Review on the Recent Progress of BiVO4 and BiFeO3 Photoanodes

“…As a result of such efforts, a few candidates have been introduced and investigated extensively. The promising candidates are BiVO 4 [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], Fe 2 O 3 [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32], and BiFeO 3 [33][34][35]. Figure 2 shows the band gap energies and band edge positions of various semiconductors with respect to the water redox potential.…”

“…In order to solve the problem, some solutions have been introduced, such as increasing the density of surface active sites or combining them with oxygen evolution co-catalysts (OECs). Recently, our group reported on the deposition of a high quality polycrystalline BiVO 4 photoanode with a controllable surface area [10]. The BiVO 4 film was grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD), and the surface area of film was optimized by controlling process temperatures during growth of the BiVO 4 .…”