We have fabricated high quality bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) polycrystalline thin films as photoanodes by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) without a postannealing process. The structure of the grown films is the photocatalytically active phase of scheelite-monoclinic BiVO4 which was obtained by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The change of surface morphology for the BIVO4 thin films depending on growth temperature during synthesis has been observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and its influence on water splitting performance was investigated. The current density of the BiVO4 film grown on a glass substrate covered with fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) at 230 °C was as high as 3.0 mA/cm2 at 1.23 V versus the potential of the reversible hydrogen electrode (VRHE) under AM 1.5G illumination, which is the highest value so far in previously reported BiVO4 films grown by physical vapor deposition (PVD) methods. We expect that doping of transition metal or decoration of oxygen evolution catalyst (OEC) in our BiVO4 film might further enhance the performance.
Keywords: bismuth vanadate; oxide photoanode; physical vapor deposition; pulsed laser deposition; water-splitting solar cell.