Journal
ELECTROCHIMICA ACTA
Volume 260, Issue -, Pages 212-220Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.electacta.2017.11.106
Keywords
Photoelectrochemical water splitting; IPCE; Gold nanostars; Titanium dioxide; Schottky contact
Categories
Funding
- Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic [CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000416, LO1305, LM2015073, 8E15B009]
- Grant Agency of the Czech Republic [15-19705S]
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Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting with TiO2 photoanodes is a promising technique for converting solar energy into a clean chemical energy. The key drawbacks of titania involve still a low PEC performance and its large band gap energy allowing absorption only in the UVregion. Plasmonic nanostructures such as Au and Ag represent a powerful tool towards the light harvesting enhancement with the efficiency dependent on their size and loading. Here, the unique nanostar morphology of plasmonic particles is presented as a new principal factor allowing the significant improvement of the incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) and the extension of light absorption over the broadband UV-Vis-NIR region. A plasmonic metal/semiconductor heterostructure synthesis is based on ex situ deposition of multispiked gold nanostars (Au-NSs) onto hydrothermally grown TiO2 nanorods. Compared to bare TiO2 nanorods, the Au-NSs-decorated TiO2 exhibits 350% and ca. 20% increase in the photocurrent density under visible light and simulated sunlight irradiation, respectively. Importantly, a significant enhancement of IPCE over the Vis-NIR region is observed with single-phase Au-NSs, the value two times higher compared to the spherical morphology. This is largely attributed to the long-wavelength plasmon resonances of Au-NSs and their ability to promote surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-mediated hot electron transfer. (c) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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