An integrated thermoelectric-assisted photoelectrochemical system to boost water splitting

Common solar-driven photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells for water splitting were designed by using semiconducting photoactive materials as working photoelectrodes to capture sunlight. Due to the thermodynamic requirement of 1.23 eV and kinetic energy loss of about 0.6 eV, a photo-voltage of 1.8 V produced by PEC cells is generally required for spontaneous water splitting. Therefore, the minimum bandgap of 1.8 eV is demanded for photoactive materials in single-photoelectrode PEC cells, and the bandgap of about 1 eV for back photoactive materials is appropriate in tandem PEC cells. All these PEC cells cannot effectively utilize the infrared light from 1250 to 2500 nm. In order to realize the full spectrum utilization of solar light, here, we develop a solar-driven PEC water splitting system integrated with a thermoelectric device. The key feature of this system is that the thermoelectric device produces a voltage as an additional bias for the PEC system by using the temperature difference between the incident infrared-light heated aqueous electrolyte in the PEC cell as the hot source and unirradiated external water as the cold source. Compared to a reference PEC system without the thermoelectric device, this system has a significantly improved overall water splitting activity of 1.6 times and may provide a strategy for accelerating the application of full spectrum solar light-driven PEC cells for hydrogen production.