Enhanced charge separation and oxidation kinetics of BiVO4 photoanode by double layer structure

Monoclinic bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) is a promising semiconductor for photoelectrochemical water splitting. Here, we developed a facile fabrication of BiVO4 double layer photoanode on the fluorine-doped tin oxide substrate by electrodeposition. The BiVO4 double layer photoanode is composed by a dense BiVO4 film as the inner layer and a nanoporous BiVO4 film as the outer layer. Compared to the BiVO4 single layer photoanode, the optimized BiVO4 double layer photoanode produced a much higher photocurrent of 1.15 mA/cm2 at 0.6 V vs. Ag/AgCl under AM 1.5G (100 mW/cm2) illumination. The results of the photoelectric conversion kinetics for different samples revealed that the charge separation and oxidation kinetics efficiencies for the BiVO4 double layer are 47.2% and 51.6% at 0.6 V vs. Ag/AgCl, while the values for BiVO4 single layer are 32.3% and 35.8%, respectively. The improved photoelectrochemical performance for BiVO4 double layer is mainly ascribed to the decrease of defect state at the interface after inserting a dense BiVO4 as an inner layer to prevent the recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs.