The Photoelectrochemical Response of a β-Carotene Coated Hematite Nanoarchitecture Biophotoelectrode with Cauliflower and Nano Octahedron Types Morphologies

The enhanced perfor mance of the semiconductor electrode for photoelectrochemical water splitting with the coating of a readily available biomolecule such as the beta-Carotene could be the next design of bio photoelectrode. In this work, how the beta-Carotene coating on a hematite photoelectrode enhanced the performance of photoelectrochemical response has been described. For the same, a one-pot material chemistry route is described here, with which hematite photoelectrode with combined morphologies of the octahedron and cauliflower type can be obtained. The primary significance of the work is that the beta-Carotene coating of hematite cauliflower helps in getting a two-fold enhancement in the photocurrent density in comparison to the uncoated one. Though there are many reports about this type of improvement, however, from the cost wise perspective, the isolated beta-Carotene pigment coating and its performance in the current study are better. Also, other main physicochemical prospects are that the beta-Carotene coating helps in removing the cathodic transient spike obtained in a transient photocurrent measurement for an uncoated hematite cauliflower. It signifies the electron donating action of beta-Carotene to prevent excitonic recombination for this kind of new bio photoelectrode design. In addition to this, the octahedron morphologies with the beta-Carotene coating also shows similar enhancement, but cauliflower type morphological performance is more evident here in terms of several trials. (C) 2019 The Electrochemical Society.