Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
7719316 | International Journal of Hydrogen Energy | 2014 | 11 Pages |
Abstract
CuO has been considered as a promising photocathodic material for photoelectrochemical (PEC) hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In this work, CuO films were prepared by a facile and cost-effective method that involves solution synthesis, spin-coating and thermal treatment processes. The resulting CuO films had a monoclinic crystal structure with bandgap energy of 1.56Â eV and a conduction band position of 3.73Â eV below the vacuum level in borate buffer solution. The CuO films exhibited good PEC activity toward HER and the preparation conditions had great effect on the activity. The photoactivity of the CuO film decayed to approximately 19% of its original value after reaction for 10Â h under illumination. The reduction of CuO to Cu2O has been confirmed to be a parallel competitive reaction against HER. The mismatched band structure of the resulting CuO/Cu2O heterojunction was believed to be the main cause of the decay of photoactivity. The photo-assisted electrodeposition method was developed to prepare CuO/Pd composite photocathode. The presence of Pd on CuO greatly increased the photocurrent especially at low overpotentials. In addition, the CuO/Pd composite exhibited significantly improved photostability compared to CuO. This work demonstrates the feasibility of increasing PEC activity and stability of CuO-based photocathodes by combining CuO with noble metal nanoparticles.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Chemistry
Electrochemistry
Authors
Xin Guo, Peng Diao, Di Xu, Shan Huang, Yang Yang, Tao Jin, Qingyong Wu, Min Xiang, Mei Zhang,