Semiconducting Synthetic Melanin-Based Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Photoanodes for Solar Water Oxidation

Cheolmin Lee; Dasom Jeon; Sanghyun Bae; Hyunwoo Kim; Yujin Han; Yang Woo Lee; Jungki Ryu

doi:10.1002/cssc.201801135

Semiconducting Synthetic Melanin-Based Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Photoanodes for Solar Water Oxidation

ChemSusChem. 2018 Oct 11;11(19):3534-3541. doi: 10.1002/cssc.201801135. Epub 2018 Sep 6.

Authors

Cheolmin Lee¹, Dasom Jeon¹, Sanghyun Bae¹, Hyunwoo Kim¹, Yujin Han¹, Yang Woo Lee², Jungki Ryu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Energy Engineering, School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), 50 UNIST-gil, Ulju-gun, Ulsan, 44919, Republic of Korea.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), 291 Daehak-ro, Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea.

PMID: 29979491
DOI: 10.1002/cssc.201801135

Abstract

We report the development of semiconducting melanin-based organic/inorganic hybrid photoanodes for solar water oxidation. Synthetic melanin thin-film incorporating polyoxometalate (POM) water oxidation catalysts (WOCs) are readily deposited on the surface of various n-type inorganic semiconductors (e.g., Fe₂ O₃ , BiVO₄ , and TiO₂ ) by electropolymerization. The deposition of melanin and POM hybrid (MP) thin-film results in the remarkably improved performance of an underlying semiconductor photoanode for solar water oxidation with a significantly increased photocurrent density and decreased onset potential for water oxidation through the formation of a melanin-based p-n heterojunction structure. We believe that this study can provide insights into the design and fabrication of various melanin-based optoelectronic devices by utilizing its unique physicochemical properties.

Keywords: heterojunction; hybrid materials; melanin; photocatalysis; water splitting.

Abstract

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