A novel visible-light responsive photocatalytic fuel cell with a highly efficient BiVO4/WO3 inverse opal photoanode and a MnO2/graphene oxide nanocomposite modified cathode

A highly efficient inverse-opal structured BiVO4/WO3 photoanode and a MnO2/graphene oxide (GO) nanocomposite modified cathode were successfully synthesized in this paper. The optimized BiVO4/WO3 inverse opal photoanode achieved a photocurrent density of similar to 5.04 mA/cm(2) at 1.2 V vs. Ag/AgCl under simulated AM 1.5 illumination, which was 2.84 and 2.36 times higher than that of WO(3 )inverse opal photoanode and BiVO4/WO3 nanoflake photoanode, respectively. The BiVO4/WO3 inverse opal photoanode was coupled with the MnO2/GO modified cathode to build up a novel visible-light responsive photocatalytic fuel cell (PFC) system. The as-established PFC showed outstanding power production performances in comparison with the PFC equipped with a bare MnO2 modified cathode. For example, in the former PFC system, the maximum power density and the short circuit current density were similar to 66.2 mu W/cm(2) and similar to 593.5 mu/cm(2), respectively, for comparison, in the latter PFC, the values were similar to 30.1 mu W/cm(2) and similar to 255.9 mu A/cm(2), respectively. The degradation experiment for Rhodamine B confirmed successful application of the as-established PFC in pollutant degradation. The mechanism for the significantly enhanced photoelectrocatalytic performances of the PFC was elucidated. The PFC system presented in this paper opened up a new prototype in developing highly efficient devices for energy conversion and environmental protection. (C) 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.