Triggering heteroatomic interdiffusion in one-pot-oxidation synthesized NiO/CuFeO_(2) heterojunction photocathodes for efficient solar hydrogen production from water splitting

摘要

Delafossite CuFeO_(2) is a promising photocathode material for cost-efficiently photoelectrochemical(PEC)water splitting,but the unfavorable conductivity and fast recombination dynamics of photogenerated carriers limit its PEC activity for water reduction.Here,we developed a heterostructure photocathode consisting of the Cu-doped NiO(Cu:NiO)hole selective layer(HSL)and Ni-doped CuFeO_(2)(Ni:CuFeO_(2))active layer by simply annealing a homogeneous Cu-Fe oxalate layer grown on the Ni film deposited on the fluorine doped tin oxide(FTO)substrate.The obtained heterostructure of Cu:NiO/Ni:CuFeO_(2) with enhanced charge carrier transportability and high-quality interface greatly promotes the separation of photogenerated carriers.Accordingly,the Cu:NiO/Ni:CuFeO_(2) photocathode exhibits a high photocurrent density of~0.9 mA·cm^(-2 )at 0.2 V(vs.reversible hydrogen electrode,RHE),outperforming most of the reported bare CuFeO_(2) photocathodes in the literature.And the photocurrent density can be further improved to 1.2 mA·cm^(-2) after decorating NiSx cocatalyst.