25 / 26
Page 66
Notes:
conferenceseries
.com
March 20-22, 2017 Orlando, USA
3
rd
International Conference on
Smart Materials & Structures
Volume 6, Issue 2 (Suppl)
J Material Sci Eng
ISSN: 2169-0022 JME, an open access journal
Smart Materials 2017
March 20-22, 2017
α
-hematite-molybdenum disulfide and polyhexylthiophene (RRPHTh)-nanodiamond (ND) electrodes for
photoelectrochemical applications
Hussein Alrobei
and
Manoj K Ram
University of South Florida, USA
T
he alpha (
α
)-hematite (Fe
2
O
3
) nanomaterial is attractive due to its band gap, chemical robustness, availability in the nature and
excellent photoelectrochemical (PEC) properties to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. However, the
α
-Fe
2
O
3
suffers from low
conductivity, slow surface kinetic, low carrier diffusion and greater electron-hole combination.The electronic properties such as carrier
mobility and diffusion of
α
-Fe
2
O
3
can be improved through doping, synthesis of composite material or formation of structured films.
Recently, 2D-molybdenum disulfide (M
o
S
2
) has shown interesting photocatalytic activity due to its bonding, chemical composition,
doping and nanoparticles grown on other 2D-film. Recently, our group has studied photoelectrochemical properties of hybrid film
of regioregular poly (3-hexylthiophene-2, 5-diyl) (P3HT) with nanodiamond as well as P3HT-M
o
S
2
. In the present study, we have
studied photoelectrochemical properties of polyhexylthiophene (RRPHTh)-nanodiamond (ND) and
α
-Fe
2
O
3
-M
o
S
2
nanocomposite
based electrodes films. The photoelectrochemical properties of
α
-Fe
2
O
3
-M
o
S
2
as n-type and ND-RRPHTh as p-type electrodes in
photoelectrochemical cell in various electrodes have been studied. We have obtained 3 to 4 times higher photocurrent and energy
conversion efficiencies than the parent electrode based photoelectrochemical cell. We have synthesized nanocomposite
α
-Fe
2
O
3
-
M
o
S
2
using sol-gel technique. The nanocomposite
α
-Fe
2
O
3
-M
o
S
2
as well as ND-RRPHTh films were characterized using SEM, X-ray
diffraction, UV-vis, FTIR and Raman techniques. The electrochemical techniques were used to understand the photocurrent in
electrode/electrolyte interface of
α
-Fe
2
O
3
-M
o
S
2
as well as ND-RRPHTh films in both acid base based electrolyte. The
α
-Fe
2
O
3
-M
o
S
2
and ND-RRPHTh electrodes reveal improved production of hydrogen compared to
α
-Fe
2
O
3
and aluminum doped
α
-Fe
2
O
3
and M
o
S
2
doped
α
-Fe
2
O
3
nanostructured films. The band structure has been used to understand the mechanism of photoelectrochemical water
splitting in p-n types based photoelectrochemical cell.
Biography
Hussein Saad Alrobei is a PhD candidate at Mechanical Engineering Department,University of South Florida, USA and lecturer at Mechanical Engineering Department,
Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia.
alrobei@mail.usf.eduHussein Alrobei et al., J Material Sci Eng 2017, 6:2 (Suppl)
http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2169-0022.C1.061