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Hierarchical growth of a novel Mn-Bi coupled BiVO4 arrays for enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting

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Abstract

Oxygen evolving catalyst (OEC) is a critical determinant for the efficiency of photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. Here we report an approach to depositing a novel manganese borate (Mn-Bi) OER catalyst on BiVO4 nanocone photoanode by photodeposition in sodium borate buffer solution containing Mn(II) ions. Due to the spontaneous photo-electric-field-enhancement effect at the vertically oriented BiVO4 nanocone structure, spherical Mn-Bi nanoparticle was selectively photodeposited at the apex of BiVO4 nanocone. Significant improvement of photocurrent was observed for the obtained hierarchical Mn-Bi/BiVO4 photoanode which could be ascribed to enhanced hole injection efficiency, especially in low bias region. It was observed that the injection efficiency of Mn-Bi/BiVO4 is 98% which gave a photocurrent of 0.94 mA/cm2 at 1.5 V vs. RHE.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully thank the financial supports from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. xjj2016039).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Research Center for Renewable Energy, State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, School of Energy & Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Lu Wang, Jinzhan Su & Liejin Guo

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  1. Lu Wang
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  2. Jinzhan Su
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  3. Liejin Guo
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Correspondence to Jinzhan Su or Liejin Guo.

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Wang, L., Su, J. & Guo, L. Hierarchical growth of a novel Mn-Bi coupled BiVO4 arrays for enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting. Nano Res. 12, 575–580 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2256-9

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