Regulation of the photogenerated carrier transfer process during photoelectrochemical water splitting:A review

摘要

Photoelectrochemical(PEC)water splitting is considered as an ideal technology to produce hydrogen.Photogenerated carrier migration is one of the most important roles in the whole process of PEC water splitting.It includes bulk transfer inside of the photoelectrode and the exchange at the solid-liquid interface.The energy barriers during the migration process lead to the dramatic recombination of photogenerated hot carrier and the reducing of their redox capacity.Thus,an applied bias voltage should be provided to overcome these energy barriers,which brings the additional loss of energy.Plentiful researches indicate that some methods for the regulation of photogenerated hot carrier,such as p-n junction,unique transfer nanochannel,tandem nanostructure and Z-Scheme transfer structure et al.,show great potential to achieve high-efficient PEC water overall splitting without any applied bias voltage.Up to now,many reviews have summarized and analyzed the methods to enhance the PEC or photocatalysis water splitting from the perspectives of materials,nanostructures and surface modification etc.However,few of them focus on the topic of photogenerated carrier transfer regulation,which is an important and urgent developing technique.For this reason,this review focuses on the regulation of photogenerated carriers generated by the photoelectrodes and summarizes different advanced methods for photogenerated carrier regulation developed in recent years.Some comments and outlooks are also provided at the end of this review.