Semiconducting Synthetic Melanin-Based Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Photoanodes for Solar Water Oxidation
Cheolmin Lee1, Dasom Jeon1, Sanghyun Bae1
1Department of Energy Engineering, School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), 50 UNIST-gil, Ulju-gun, Ulsan, 44919, Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
We report the development of semiconducting melanin-based organic/inorganic hybrid photoanodes for solar water oxidation. Synthetic melanin thin-film incorporating polyoxometalate (POM) water oxidation catalysts (WOCs) are readily deposited on the surface of various n-type inorganic semiconductors (e.g., Fe2 O3 , BiVO4 , and TiO2 ) by electropolymerization. The deposition of melanin and POM hybrid (MP) thin-film results in the remarkably improved performance of an underlying semiconductor photoanode for solar water oxidation with a significantly increased photocurrent density and decreased onset potential for water oxidation through the formation of a melanin-based p-n heterojunction structure. We believe that this study can provide insights into the design and fabrication of various melanin-based optoelectronic devices by utilizing its unique physicochemical properties.
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