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Published on: August 23, 2012
Efficient and Stable Silicon Photocathodes Coated with Vertically Standing Nano-MoS2 Films for Solar Hydrogen
Ronglei Fan1, Jie Mao1, Zhihao Yin1
1Department of Physics, Optoelectronics and Energy, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Thin Films and ‡Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-based Functional Materials and Devices, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, Soochow University , Suzhou 215006, China.
Abstract:
Water splitting in a photoelectrochemical cell, which converts sunlight into hydrogen energy, has recently received intense research. Silicon is suitable as a viable light-harvesting material for constructing such cell; however, there is a need to improve its stability and explore a cheap and efficient cocatalyst. Here we fabricate highly efficient and stable photocathodes by integrating crystalline MoS2 catalyst with ∼2 nm Al2O3 protected n+p-Si. Al2O3 acts as a protective and passivative layer of the Si surface, while the sputtering method using a MoS2 target along with a postannealing leads to a vertically standing, conformal, and crystalline nano-MoS2 layer on Al2O3/n+p-Si photocathode. Efficient (0.4 V vs RHE onset potential and 35.6 mA/cm2 saturated photocurrent measured under 100 mA/cm2 Xe lamp illumination) and stable (above 120 h continuous water splitting) photocathode was obtained, which opens the door for the MoS2 catalyst to be applied in photoelectrochemical hydrogen evolution in a facile and scalable way.
