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Photo-assisted charge/discharge of a secondary cell of α-Fe2O3/Prussian blue–based electrodes

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Abstract

In this work, an assembly of FTO/α-Fe2O3/PB|M+ electrolyte|PB/α-Fe2O3/FTO (M+ = Li+, Na+, K+) secondary photocell was done to improve the charge capacity in the presence of illumination. Our previous results with these electrodes demonstrated the possibility of transferring photogenerated carriers from hematite to Prussian blue. This cell was characterized by incident photon-to-current efficiency (IPCE) and galvanostatic charge/discharge measurements under illumination and compared in darkness. A higher IPCE when potassium ions are employed in the cell was founded, which suggests an easy insertion/desertion of these ions inside/outside of the hexacyanometallate framework, related to the more compact water coordination sphere for this ion. The voltage cell increased when the system was charged under illumination, indicating an increase in the oxidation/reduction of iron centers in the hexacyanometallate structure due to the increase of photogenerated carriers in hematite. The cell’s specific capacity reaches around 12% of the theoretical capacity, with a voltage close to the theoretical (1.5 V) and about 95% of coulombic efficiency when the cell was charged and discharged at longer times (8 h).

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Fritz Scholz of the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald for his collaboration on the discussion of this work.

Funding

This study was financially supported by FONDECYT, Chile (grant no. 1180784) and by VRIEA-PUCV (grant no. 039.438 NÚCLEO-PUCV and 125.728/2018 DII-PUCV). E. Navarrete thanks the postdoctoral project FONDECYT (no. 3200216) for financial support. V. Rojas and S. López received doctoral scholarship from ANID.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Ciencias, Instituto de Química, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Av. Universidad 330, Valparaíso, Chile

    Víctor Rojas, Silvana López, Gustavo Cáceres, Ricardo G. Schrebler, Paula Grez, Rodrigo Henríquez & Eduardo C. Muñoz

  2. Instituto de Ciencias Químicas Aplicadas, Inorganic Chemistry and Molecular Material Center, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Av. El Llano Subercaseaux 2801, San Miguel, Santiago, Chile

    Luis Ballesteros

  3. Departamento de Ciencias Químicas y Recursos Naturales, Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad de La Frontera, Av Francisco Salazar, 01145, Temuco, Chile

    Emilio Navarrete

  4. Departamento de Química de los Materiales, Facultad de Química y Biología, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Av. Libertador Bernardo O’higgins, 3363, Estación Central, Santiago, Chile

    Francisco Herrera

Authors
  1. Víctor Rojas
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  2. Silvana López
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  3. Gustavo Cáceres
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  4. Ricardo G. Schrebler
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  5. Paula Grez
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  6. Rodrigo Henríquez
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  7. Luis Ballesteros
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  8. Emilio Navarrete
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  9. Francisco Herrera
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  10. Eduardo C. Muñoz
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Correspondence to Eduardo C. Muñoz.

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Rojas, V., López, S., Cáceres, G. et al. Photo-assisted charge/discharge of a secondary cell of α-Fe2O3/Prussian blue–based electrodes. J Solid State Electrochem 25, 1131–1138 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-020-04888-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-020-04888-5

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