Identifying and Removing the Interfacial States in Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Schottky Si Photoanodes for the Highest...

A critical bottleneck for realizing an efficient Schottky type Si photoelectrode is minimizing the charge extraction losses across the heterointerface via reducing the unfavorite defects. This requires a clear microscopic insight into the correlation between interfacial features and photoconversion. Herein, by taking the n-Si/oxide (MO)/Ni as the prototype, the heterointerface with the different characteristics and its effects on charge transportation and the corresponding photoelectric/photoelectrochemical (PEC) behaviors were clarified. An ultra-thin AlO layer can effectively diminish the interfacial pinning of n-Si/Ni and significantly facilitate the photoconversion; meanwhile, it results in some unexpected donor-like deep defects at around 0.59 eV below the conduction band of n-Si, which could be ionized under a reverse bias and cause about 10% photogenerated charge recombination. Fortunately, these deep defects can be further eliminated by cooperating AlO with a thin Au layer. The AlO/Au dual-interlayer can remove almost all unexpected defects and maximize the efficiency of the electric field for charge extraction from semiconductor Si for the surface catalytic reaction. Eventually, the n-Si/SiO/AlO/Au/Ni/NiFeO photoanode exhibited a record fill factor of 0.75 for the corresponding photoelectric device and an applied bias photon-to-current efficiency of 3.71% for PEC water oxidation. This study provides definite insights into interfacial electronic states and elaborates their crucial role in solar photoelectric conversion.