Visible-light-promoted gas-phase water splitting using porous WO3/BiVO4 photoanodes

- Innovative porous Ti(0) substrate for the WO3/BiVO4 junction
- Multi-step photoanode fabrication combining sputtering, anodization and SILAR techniques
- Compatibility of the photoanodes with the novel solid-state PEM-PEC cell
- Photoanodes maintained performance from liquid to solid electrolyte PEM-PEC cell.

We recently described the use of Ti(0) microfibers as an anodization substrate for the preparation of TiO2 nanotubes arrays as porous photoanodes. Here, we report the use of these fibers as a scaffold to build porous photoanodes based on a WO3/BiVO4 heterojunction. The obtained photoelectrodes show promising results under visible light irradiation for water oxidation both in a typical liquid-phase photoelectrochemical setup and in a gas phase reactor (developed in-house) based on a polymeric electrolyte membrane.

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