Spontaneous decoration of silicon surfaces with MoOx nanoparticles for the sunlight-assisted hydrogen evolution reaction

T-G Truong; C Mériadec; B Fabre; J-F Bergamini; O de Sagazan; S Ababou-Girard; G Loget

doi:10.1039/c6nr08408g

Spontaneous decoration of silicon surfaces with MoO_x nanoparticles for the sunlight-assisted hydrogen evolution reaction

Nanoscale. 2017 Feb 2;9(5):1799-1804. doi: 10.1039/c6nr08408g.

Authors

T-G Truong¹, C Mériadec², B Fabre¹, J-F Bergamini¹, O de Sagazan³, S Ababou-Girard², G Loget¹

Affiliations

¹ Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes, UMR 6226 CNRS, Matière Condensée et Systèmes Electroactifs (MaCSE), Université de Rennes 1, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France. gabriel.loget@univ-rennes1.fr bruno.fabre@univ-rennes1.fr.
² Institut de Physique de Rennes, UMR 6251 CNRS, Département Matériaux Nanosciences, Université de Rennes 1, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France.
³ IETR, Université de Rennes 1, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France.

PMID: 28098295
DOI: 10.1039/c6nr08408g

Abstract

The immersion of oxide-free Si surfaces in MoS₄^2- aqueous solutions induces their spontaneous decoration with isolated MoO_x nanoparticles (NPs). The process is versatile and was used on planar Si (100) as well as on antireflective Si (111) micro-pyramid (SimPy) arrays. The NP decoration does not affect the optical properties of the surface in the visible range and improves the performance of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) under simulated sunlight. The simplicity and the scalability of the technique make it highly promising for the fabrication of catalytically active photoelectrodes. More specifically, the MoO_x-decorated SimPy produced H₂ at a rate of 11 μmol cm^-2 min^-1 with a faradaic efficiency higher than 90% at -0.35 V vs. RHE. Furthermore, this process can be of great interest for other applications in high-performance electronic devices.