Journal
NANO ENERGY
Volume 31, Issue -, Pages 441-449Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2016.11.053
Keywords
Environment-friendly; High efficiency; Photoelectrochemical cell; Near infrared; Quantum dots
Categories
Funding
- Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
- NSERC through an EWR Steacie Memorial Fellowship
- Canada Research Chairs program
- UNESCO Chair in Materials and Technologies for Energy Conversion, Saving and Storage (MATECSS)
- Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC)
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Photoelectrochemical (PEC) hydrogen generation based on colloidal quantum dots (QDs) is very promising because of its high solar energy to fuel conversion efficiency and low fabrication costs. However, its commercial development is hindered by various challenges, including the widespread use of toxic heavy metal based QDs as sensitizers. We report an environmentally friendly, high efficiency PEC device in which the photoanode consists of a mesoporous TiO2 film sensitized with heavy metal-free, near-infrared (NIR) colloidal CuInSexS2-x (CISeS) QDs. To reduce surface-related traps, we grew an ultrathin ZnS shell on the CISeS core QDs by cation exchange. The PEC cell based on this core/shell CISeS/ZnS QDs exhibits suppressed charge recombination and a saturated photocurrent density of similar to 5.3 mA/cm(2) under one sun illumination (AM 1.5 G, 100 mW/cm(2)). In addition, the as-prepared PEC device shows an outstanding stability, exhibiting a drop of only 23% after 9 h illumination. The success in using such core/shell CISeS/ZnS QDs paves the way to realize environment-friendly, high efficiency and cost-effective PEC devices for hydrogen production.
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