Performance and failure modes of Si anodes patterned with thin-film Ni catalyst islands for water oxidation

Abstract

Silicon photoanodes patterned with thin-film Ni catalyst islands exhibited stable sunlight-driven O2 evolution for over 240 h of continuous operation in 1.0 M KOH.

Tin Oxide as a Protective Heterojunction with Silicon for Efficient Photoelectrochemical Water Oxidation in Strongly Acidic or Alkaline Electrolytes

“…Patterning the metallic films of Ni, Ir, or Pt catalysts into microdisk arrays allowed for increased loading of the catalysts while blocking little of the exciting solar radiation (details in the Experimental Section) . Metal microdisk arrays consisted of 2–3 µm diameter metal disks with an ≈7 µm pitch, and covered ≈9% of the electrode area (Figure S9, Supporting Information).…”

Light‐Induced Activation of Adaptive Junction for Efficient Solar‐Driven Oxygen Evolution: In Situ Unraveling the Interfacial Metal–Silicon Junction

“…[25][26][27] Several technologies have been demonstrated to reveal the reaction intermediates at the material-liquid interface. [24,[28][29][30][31][32] For example, we have developed an in situ grazing angle X-ray scattering method to probe the formation of a metal oxyhydroxide phase at the electrocatalyst-electrolyte junction during the OER [29] and have realized an in situ X-ray absorption method to investigate the roles of individual metals in a multimetal system undergoing both photoinduced reactions and electrochemical catalysis. [26,33] Additionally, Lin et al investigated a dual-working-electrode (DWE) technique for the in situ monitoring of the photoelectrochemistry to observe the junction behaviors in photoelectrodes during water oxidation [23,24,34] and demonstrated a contact-based potential-sensing electrochemical atomic force microscopy (PS-EC-AFM) technique to measure the surface potential of a CoPihematite photoanode in operando, suggesting the role of CoPi is as both a hole-collector and electrocatalyst.…”

“…To reveal the fundamental properties of the interfacial charge‐transfer process, atomic‐scale tracking techniques that allow simultaneous realization of both the photo‐ and electrochemical behaviors are highly desired . Several technologies have been demonstrated to reveal the reaction intermediates at the material–liquid interface . For example, we have developed an in situ grazing angle X‐ray scattering method to probe the formation of a metal oxyhydroxide phase at the electrocatalyst–electrolyte junction during the OER and have realized an in situ X‐ray absorption method to investigate the roles of individual metals in a multimetal system undergoing both photoinduced reactions and electrochemical catalysis .…”

High Broadband Light Transmission for Solar Fuels Production Using Dielectric Optical Waveguides in TiO2 Nanocone Arrays

“…18% of the photoelectrode surface have demonstrated a light-limited current density of 20.4 mA cm -2 . 51 Modeling has shown that the optimal efficiency of a water-splitting system using a lightfacing photocathode patterned with Pt islands covering 5% of the optical plane closely approaches that of a system using a photocathode patterned with a hypothetical transparent catalyst with the same activity as Pt. 52 Furthermore, photoanodes do not require reflective metallic catalyst coatings;…”