Atmospheric electrostatic induction on carrier transfer in volumetric photoelectrochemical system with MXene-modified electrodes

An Gui; Xiuyu Chen; Xiaoyu Zhang; Changchang Shi; Haibo Yi; Yongan Hu; Wei Zeng; Siliang Wang; Limin Ruan; Yi Xiong; Zhiliang Chen

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.09.001

Atmospheric electrostatic induction on carrier transfer in volumetric photoelectrochemical system with MXene-modified electrodes

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Jan;629(Pt A):628-639. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.09.001. Epub 2022 Sep 6.

Authors

An Gui¹, Xiuyu Chen¹, Xiaoyu Zhang¹, Changchang Shi¹, Haibo Yi¹, Yongan Hu¹, Wei Zeng², Siliang Wang³, Limin Ruan⁴, Yi Xiong⁵, Zhiliang Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ Industry-Education-Research Institute of Advanced Materials and Technology for Integrated Circuits, School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, Anhui, China; National Engineering Research Center for Agro-Ecological Big Data Analysis & Application, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, Anhui, China.
² Industry-Education-Research Institute of Advanced Materials and Technology for Integrated Circuits, School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, Anhui, China; National Engineering Research Center for Agro-Ecological Big Data Analysis & Application, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, Anhui, China. Electronic address: zengwei@ahu.edu.cn.
³ Industry-Education-Research Institute of Advanced Materials and Technology for Integrated Circuits, School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, Anhui, China; National Engineering Research Center for Agro-Ecological Big Data Analysis & Application, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, Anhui, China. Electronic address: sliang_wang@163.com.
⁴ National Engineering Research Center for Agro-Ecological Big Data Analysis & Application, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, Anhui, China; School of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Hefei University, No. 99 Jinxiu Road, Hefei, Anhui Province, China.
⁵ School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences, Department of Microelectronics, National Local Joint Engineering Laboratory for Advanced Textile Processing and Clean Production, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan, 430073 Hubei, China.

PMID: 36095898
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.09.001

Abstract

With WO₃/BiVO₄/MXene ternary composite layers as a working electrode, a smart volumetric photoelectrochemical system using electrostatic bias voltage inducted by atmospheric electric field was developed. Under single sun illumination and 0.8 V hardwired bias, the current response of the ternary electrode is 1.15 mA cm^-2, which is 1.31 times higher than that of the WO₃/BiVO₄ electrode, mainly due to the higher charge transfer rate between the MXene layer and the BiVO₄ structure. Further, the response of the ternary electrode increases to 1.39 mA cm^-2 at an extra atmospheric electric field of 1100 V m^-1. It can be demonstrated that the effect of the atmospheric electric field can be regarded as an extra hardwired bias of 0.101 V in the system. The experimental results reveal that the native carriers, including inducted electron/holes in MXene and BiVO₄, and carriers in the electrolyte, are all effectively excited by the electrostatic induction of atmospheric electric field.

Keywords: Atmospheric electric filed; Electrostatic induction; Heterojunction; Photoelectrochemistry.