Modified Nanopillar Arrays for Highly Stable and Efficient Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting

• Published in: Global challenges Vol. 3; no. 3; pp. 1800027 - n/a
• Main Authors: Huang, Lanyan, Meng, Qingguo, Shang, Chaoqun, Jin, Mingliang, Shui, Lingling, Zhang, Yongguang, Zhang, Zhang, Chen, Zhihong, Yuan, Mingzhe, Wang, Xin, Kempa, Krzysztof, Zhou, Guofu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Germany John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.03.2019; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Arrays; Carbon; Carbon nitride; Chemical vapor deposition; Communication; Communications; Defects; Environmental impact; graphitic carbon nitride; Hydrogen; hydrogen evolution; Photoabsorption; Photocatalysis; photoelectrochemistry; Quantum dots; Scanning electron microscopy; Spectrum analysis; Splitting; Stability; TiO2 nanopillars; Titanium dioxide; Water splitting; quantum dots; hydrogen evolution; photoelectrochemistry; TiO2 nanopillars; graphitic carbon nitride
• ISSN: 2056-6646; 2056-6646
• DOI: 10.1002/gch2.201800027

Atomically modified graphitic carbon nitride quantum dots (QDs), characterized by strongly increased reactivity and stability, are developed. These are deposited on arrays of TiO2 nanopillars used as a photoanode for the photoelectrochemical water splitting. This photoanode shows excellent stability, with 111 h of continuous work without any performance loss, which outperforms the best‐reported results by a factor of 10. Remarkably, our photoanode produces hydrogen even at zero bias. The excellent performance is attributed to the enhancement of photoabsorption, as well as to the promotion of charge separation between TiO2 nanopillars and the QDs. TiO2 nanopillars decorated with N‐defects graphitic carbon nitride quantum dots are developed for water splitting in this work. This photoanode demonstrates excellent photocatalytic stability (more than 110 h of continuous illumination without any performance loss) and produces hydrogen with a rate of 0.8525 µmol·h−1·cm−2 even at zero bias.