Photoelectrochemical properties of hematite thin films grown by MW-CBD

In this study, Fe2O3 thin films were grown on a Fe2O3 buffered-film using the microwave chemical bath deposition (MW-CBD) method with different FeCl3 precursor concentrations. The morphological, optical, structural, electrical and photoelectrochemical properties of the Fe2O3 thin films were studied according to the different precursor concentrations, and the relationships between each property were systematically analyzed. From the study, we found that the morphological, structural and electrical properties greatly influenced the photoelectrochemical properties. As a result, the 0.1 M sample, which has good morphological, structural, and electrical properties has the highest photocurrent density value of 0.31 mA/cm2 (at 0.5 V vs. SCE), and has good photostability properties. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM) were used to characterize the morphological properties of the Fe2O3 thin films. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to study the structural properties, UV-visible spectroscopy was used to measure the optical properties, electrochemical impedance spectroscope (EIS) was used to characterize the electrical properties and a three-electrode potentiostat was used to measure the photoelectrochemical properties.