Research on the Influence of the Interfacial Properties Between a Cu3 BiS3 Film and an Inx Cd1- x S Buffer Layer for Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting

Xiaomin Wu; Weidong Zhao; Yucheng Hu; Guohong Xiao; Huanyang Ni; Shigeru Ikeda; Yunhau Ng; Feng Jiang

doi:10.1002/advs.202204029

Research on the Influence of the Interfacial Properties Between a Cu₃ BiS₃ Film and an In_x Cd_1- _x S Buffer Layer for Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting

Adv Sci (Weinh). 2022 Nov;9(33):e2204029. doi: 10.1002/advs.202204029. Epub 2022 Oct 17.

Authors

Xiaomin Wu¹, Weidong Zhao¹, Yucheng Hu¹, Guohong Xiao¹, Huanyang Ni¹, Shigeru Ikeda², Yunhau Ng³, Feng Jiang^{1

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Affiliations

¹ Institute of Hydrogen Energy for Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutralization, School of Semiconductor Science and Technology, South China Normal University, Foshan, 528225, China.
² Department of Chemistry, Konan University, 9-1 Okamoto, Higashinada, Kobe, Hyogo, 658-8501, Japan.
³ School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, 999077, China.
⁴ Institute of Semiconductor Science and Technology, South China Normal University, 55 Zhongshan Avenue West, Tianhe District, Guangzhou, 510631, China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Polar Materials and Devices, Ministry of Education, East China Normal University, Information Building, 500 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200241, China.

Abstract

The ternary compound photovoltaic semiconductor Cu₃ BiS₃ thin film-based photoelectrode demonstrates a quite promising potential for photoelectrochemical hydrogen evolution. The presented high onset potential of 0.9 V_RHE attracts much attention and shows that the Cu₃ BiS₃ thin films are quite good as an efficient solar water splitting photoelectrode. However, the CdS buffer does not fit the Cu₃ BiS₃ thin film: the conduction band offset between CdS and Cu₃ BiS₃ reaches 0.7 eV, and such a high conduction band offset (CBO) significantly increases the interfacial recombination ratio and is the main reason for the relatively low photocurrent of the Cu₃ BiS₃ /CdS photoelectrode. In this study, the In_x Cd_1- _x S buffer layer is found to be significantly lowered the CBO of CBS/buffer and that the In incorporation ratio of the buffer influences the CBO value of the CBS/buffer. The Pt-TiO₂ /In_0.6 Cd_0.4 S/Cu₃ BiS₃ photocathode exhibits an appreciable photocurrent density of ≈12.20 mA cm^-2 at 0 V_RHE with onset potential of more than 0.9 V_RHE , and the ABPE of the Cu₃ BiS₃ -based photocathode reaches the highest value of 3.13%. By application of the In_0.6 Cd_0.4 S buffer, the Cu₃ BiS₃ -BiVO₄ tandem cell presents a stable and excellent unbiased STH of 2.57% for over 100 h.

Keywords: Cu3BiS3 compound semiconductors; band alignment; photovoltaic thin film; solar water splitting.

Abstract

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