A design study of TiO_2/n-Si energy band structure for charge carrier transportation in water splitting electrode

摘要

The present work aims to design a semiconductor system for an effective charger carrier separation and transportation process in a water splitting electrode. Therefore, a conduction band discontinuity between anatase phase titanium dioxide (A-TiO_2) and n-type silicon (n-Si) was investigated in this study. A-TiO_2 for the survey of a junction between TiO_2 and Si was deposited on an n-Si substrate via a spin-coating technique followed by a two-step annealing process. Three different n-type Si substrates with dopant density of 10~(15-16); 10~(17-18); 10~(20-21) cm~(-3) were used in this study. XRD and FE-SEM techniques were used for crystal phase and surface microstructure analysis. Electronic states of TiO_2 and n-Si for energy band evaluation was measured with XPS. Current-Voltage characteristics and dark-current were measured for a better understanding of charge carrier transfer in the TiO_2/n-Si junction.