BiOI/WO₃ photoanode with enhanced photoelectrochemical water splitting activity

Abstract

This work reports on a novel BiOI/WO₃ composite photoanode, which was fabricated by depositing BiOI onto a WO₃ nanoflake electrode through a electrodeposition method. The photoelectrochemical (PEC) activity of the BiOI/WO₃ electrode for water splitting under visible-light irradiation was evaluated. The results show that the BiOI/WO₃ photoanode achieved a photocurrent density of 1.21 mA·cm⁻² at 1.23 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), which was higher than that of the bare WO₃ nanoflake electrode (0.67 mA·cm⁻²). The enhanced PEC acticity of BiOI/WO₃ for water splitting can be attributed to the expansion of light absorption range as well as the facilitated separation of photo-generated carriers.

Keywords

photoelectrochemistry / WO₃ / BiOI / water splitting

References

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Major International (Regional) Joint Research Project NSFC-SNSF (Grant No. 51661135023), NSFC (Grant No. 21673091), the National Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China (No. 2014CB643506), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (HUST: 2016YXMS031), the Director Fund of the WNLO, the Open Funds of the State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry (No. SKLEAC201607), Key Scientific and Technological Project of Henan Province (No. 182102311084). The authors thank the Analytical and Testing Center of HUST and the Center for Nanoscale Characterization & Devices (CNCD), WNLO-HUST for the measurements.

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