Journal
NANO LETTERS
Volume 11, Issue 12, Pages 5587-5593Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/nl203729j
Keywords
ZnO; piezoelectric potential; piezotronics; interface band engineering; photoelectrochemistry
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Funding
- National Science Foundation [DMR-0905914]
- DARPA [N66001-11-1-4139]
- UW-Madison graduate school
- PECASE [FA9550-091-0482]
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Through a process of photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting, we demonstrated an effective strategy for engineering the barrier height of a heterogeneous semiconductor interface by piezoelectric polarization, known as the piezotronic effect. A consistent enhancement or reduction of photocurrent was observed when tensile or compressive strains were applied to the ZnO anode, respectively. The photocurrent variation is attributed to a changed barrier height at the ZnO/ITO interface, which is a result of the remnant piezoelectric potential across the interface due to a nonideal free charge distribution in the ITO electrode. In our system, similar to 1.5 mV barrier height change per 0.1% applied strain was identified, and 0.21% tensile strain yielded a similar to 10% improvement of the maximum PEC efficiency. The remnant piezopotential is dictated by the screening length of the materials in contact with piezoelectric component. The difference between this time-independent remnant piezopotential effect and time-dependent piezoelectric effect is also studied in details.
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