Novel Au fishnet/Fe2O3/CoAl LDH sandwich structure for enhanced photoelectrochemical performance

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting provides a promising and sustainable method to obtain hydrogen fuels for solar energy storage. Photoanode as the core component in such a system has played a pivotal role in determining the solar conversion efficiency. Herein, we report an Au fishnet/Fe2O3/CoAl LDH sandwich structure as the photoanode with the aim of improving its PEC water splitting efficiency and stability. Generally, the optimized sample demonstrates a photocurrent density of 1.5 mA.cm(-2) at 1.23 V vs. reverse hydrogen electrode (RHE) in neutral electrolyte, which is ca. 3 times higher than that of pure Fe2O3, with onset potential of 0.5 V vs. the RHE. Such an excellent performance is determined to be attributed to the lowered impedance and prolonged charge carrier lifetime endowed by the synergetic effect of Schottky junction, resonant energy transfer (RET) process and holes trapping. Our finding in this work opens up a new opportunity in photoconversion applications.

Automated summary

We present an Au fishnet/Fe2O3/CoAl LDH sandwich structure as the photoanode to improve PEC water splitting efficiency and stability. The optimized sample shows excellent performance in neutral electrolyte, with a photocurrent density of 1.5 mA.cm(-2) at 1.23 V vs. RHE, attributed to the synergetic effect of Schottky junction, resonant energy transfer (RET) process and holes trapping.