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Fabrication of WO3 photoanode on crystalline Si solar cell for water splitting

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Abstract

An integrated device of solar cell and photocatalysis (p-Si fronted solar cell/ CoSi2/WO3) has been used as photoanode for water splitting. The WO3 had been synthesized by co-electrodeposition of CoW on the p-Si fronted solar cell and followed by the annealing and acid treatment. The XRD and SEM show the amorphous structure for both as-depostion and after treatment samples. After the treatment, XPS and the ellipsometer spectroscopy shows that the CoSi2 and WO3 was formed with the band gap of 1.32 eV and 2.67 eV, respectively. Without additional power, we had demonstrated that the p-Si fronted solar cell/CoSi2/WO3 can achieve ~ 0.046 mA/cm2 photocurrent.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61664009, 51771169). This work is also funded in part by General Project of Applied Basic Research of Yunnan Science and Technology Department (Grant No. 2019FB-4), Scientific Research Foundation of Yunnan Education Department (Grant No. 2019J0027).

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  1. Yuanfei Feng and Linlin Guan have contributed equally to this.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics and Astronomy of Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, Yunnan, China

    Yuanfei Feng, Linlin Guan, Junjie Li, Xuan Li, Shuyu Zhang, Yangjing Jiao, Shuangshuang Zhang, Yuting Lin, Yang Ren, Xiaowei Zhou & Zhu Liu

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  1. Yuanfei Feng
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Feng, Y., Guan, L., Li, J. et al. Fabrication of WO3 photoanode on crystalline Si solar cell for water splitting. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 31, 14137–14144 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-020-03968-6

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