Flaky nano-crystalline SnSe2 thin films for photoelectrochemical current generation

Xiuyuan Shao; Shisheng Li; Dai-Ming Tang

doi:10.1039/c8ra04639e

Flaky nano-crystalline SnSe₂ thin films for photoelectrochemical current generation

RSC Adv. 2018 Sep 17;8(56):32157-32163. doi: 10.1039/c8ra04639e. eCollection 2018 Sep 12.

Authors

Xiuyuan Shao¹, Shisheng Li^{1

2

3}, Dai-Ming Tang³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, National University of Singapore 6 Science Drive 2 117546 Singapore xiuyuan_shao@u.nus.edu.
² Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, National University of Singapore 2 Science Drive 3 117542 Singapore.
³ International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) Namiki 1-1 Tsukuba Ibaraki 305-0044 Japan LI.Shisheng@nims.go.jp.

Abstract

We report chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and photoelectrochemical properties of large-area thin films of nano-crystalline SnSe₂ on conducting FTO glass. We show that densely packed, randomly oriented SnSe₂ nanoflakes can be grown by reacting vapors of tin monoselenide (SnSe) and selenium at 550 °C without compromising the electrical properties of FTO. We demonstrate that SnSe₂/FTO is photoelectrochemically active in visible to near-UV wavelengths (350-700 nm) and exhibits incident-photon-to-current-efficiency (IPCE) as high as 3.7% at 0 V versus the Ag/AgCl/1 M KCl reference electrode under 350 nm light illumination.