Journal
ACS APPLIED ENERGY MATERIALS
Volume 3, Issue 2, Pages 1373-1380Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acsaem.9b01781
Keywords
cuprous oxide; nickel doping; n-type; photoelectrochemistry; electrodeposition
Funding
- National Science Council
- National Dong Hwa University [MOST 105-2221-E-259-024-MY3, MOST 107-2221-E-259-029-MY3]
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Herein, Ni is for the first time put forward as a promising dopant to promote the photoelectrochemical property of cuprous oxide (Cu2O) with particularly n-type conduction. An electrochemical route is utilized to deposit Ni:Cu2O on the indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass as a dense thin film with tree-like morphology, as revealed through scanning electron microscopy. Particularly, the incorporation of Ni that is verified via X-ray diffractometry leads to a compressive stress compensating well the tensile strain within Cu2O, which originates otherwise from large lattice mismatch between Cu2O and ITO. This in turn improves the crystallinity of the Ni:Cu2O thin film. More importantly, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy indicates that the substitution of Ni(II) for Cu(I) boosts the carrier concentration to 8.4 X 10(18) cm(-3), as further evidenced by the Mott-Schottky analysis. Those enhancements along with an advantageous band structure including a flat-band potential of -1.1 V and a bandgap of 2.1 eV that is alternatively derived from UV-vis spectroscopy allow Ni:Cu2O to deliver an outstanding photocurrent of 2.5 mA cm(-2) (at 0.3 V vs Ag/AgCl) for solar water splitting. Such performance well-surpasses those of other reported n-type Cu2O photoanodes more than 2-fold, attesting the great promise of Ni:Cu2O in this work for solar-related applications.
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