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conferenceseries
.com
Volume 08
Innovative Energy & Research
ISSN: 2576-1463
Advanced Energy Materials 2019
July 11-12, 2019
July 11-12, 2019 | Zurich, Switzerland
21
st
International Conference on
Advanced Energy Materials and Research
Semiconductor nanostructure engineering for solar hydrogen production
Sabiha Akter Monny, Zhiliang Wang
and
Lianzhou Wang
The University of Queensland, Australia
P
hotoelecctrochemcial water splitting provides an attractive method to convert the abundant solar energy
into sustainable and clean hydrogen energy. The greatest challenge is how to develop efficient and stable
photoelectrodes, including photoanodes and photocathodes. Comparing to the widely studied photoanodes, the
photocathodes have been paid less attention due to the scarcity of suitable semiconductor candidates. Some available
photocathodes derived from p-type semiconductors such as single crystal Si, chalcogenide (e.g., CuInGaSe) are
either not stable or too expensive to realize large scale application. Herein, a promising p-type semiconductor,
CuBi
2
O
4
, has been used to fabricate efficient photocathode. Moreover, combining the CuBi
2
O
4
photocathode with
well-developed BiVO
4
photoanode, it is able to demonstrate unbiased sunlight-driven solar water splitting. CuBi
2
O
4
electrodes were prepared with electrodeposited BiOI and copper acetylacetonate as precusor after heating in air at
450°C for 4 hours. The CuBi
2
O
4
photocathode possesses a porous nano branch strucutre and showed a photocurrent
of -0.95 mA/cm
2
at 0.21 VRHE along with an onset potential at 1.1 VRHE in Sodium Phosphate (~pH 7) electrolyte.
With the presence of electron scavengers, the photocurrent was further enhanced to -2.4 mA/cm
2
at 0.48 VRHE. The
incident photon-to-current efficiency showed a threshold at ca. 620 nm, suggesting a broad light harvesting range
of the CuBi
2
O
4
photocathode. Furthermore, the large onset potential of CuBi
2
O
4
photocathode makes it feasible to
realize unbiased photoelectrode water splitting when combined with suitable photoanode, such as BiVO
4
.
Biography
SabihaAkter Monny is a PhD student at the University of Queensland. She specialises in renewable energy, energy conversion and nanomaterials. Her research
focuses on developing photocatalysts using semiconductor nanomaterials for photoelectrochemical energy conversion.
s.monny@uq.edu.auSabiha Akter Monny et al., Innov Ener Res 2019, Volume 08
Figure:The photoresponse of CuBi2O4 and BiVO4 under chopped light