Mesoporous tungsten oxide modified by nanolayered manganese-calcium oxide as robust photoanode for solar water splitting

Kezhen Li; Chao Zhang; Aijuan Liu; Dongmei Chu; Chunyong Zhang; Ping Yang; Yukou Du; Jie Huang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2018.01.053

Mesoporous tungsten oxide modified by nanolayered manganese-calcium oxide as robust photoanode for solar water splitting

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2018 Apr 15:516:145-152. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.01.053. Epub 2018 Jan 16.

Authors

Kezhen Li¹, Chao Zhang¹, Aijuan Liu¹, Dongmei Chu¹, Chunyong Zhang¹, Ping Yang², Yukou Du¹, Jie Huang³

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China.
² College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China. Electronic address: pyang@suda.edu.cn.
³ Key Laboratory of Nano-Bio Interface, Division of Nanobiomedicine, Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou 215123, China. Electronic address: jhuang2008@sinano.ac.cn.

PMID: 29367065
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.01.053

Abstract

Described herein is the synthesis, characterization and photoelectrochemical behavior of a novel composite consisting of nanolayered manganese-calcium oxide (MCO) and mesoporous tungsten trioxide (WO₃). The samples were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results demonstrated that superior interfacial contacts had been formed between WO₃ and MCO. UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), photoelectrochemical characterization, and incident photon-to-current efficiency (IPCE) revealed an enhanced light harvesting and effective electron-hole separation. A photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell composed of the n-type MCO/WO₃ as a photoanode and platinum sheet as a counter electrode was assembled to estimate the feasibility for overall water splitting under a solar simulator illumination. The photocatalytic hydrogen and oxygen production from the photochemical cell with optimized photocatalyst (MCO/WO₃-9) under 2 h simulated solar light irradiation was 1.9 μmol and 0.7 μmol, respectively, at low extra bias (0.90 V vs. RHE). Our investigation suggests that coupling MCO with n-type semiconductor WO₃ as photoanode is a promising method to improve the activity of overall water splitting to generate oxygen and hydrogen.

Keywords: Hydrogen production; Manganese-calcium oxide; Photoelectrochemical cell; Tungsten trioxide; Water splitting.