Enhanced solar water oxidation and unassisted water splitting using graphite-protected bulk heterojunction organic photoactive layers
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Polymer donors and non-fullerene acceptors have played an important role as photoactive materials in the development of high-efficiency organic solar cells and have immense potential in devices for direct solar hydrogen generation. However, their use in direct solar water-splitting devices has been limited by their instability in aqueous environment and recombination losses at the interface with catalysts. Here we report anodes containing PM6:D18:L8-BO photoactive layers reaching high solar water oxidation photocurrent density over 25 mA cm−2 at +1.23 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode and days-long operational stability. This was achieved by integrating the organic photoactive layer with a graphite sheet functionalized with earth-abundant NiFeOOH water oxidation catalyst, which provides both water resistance and electrical connection between the catalyst and the photoactive layer without any losses. Using monolithic tandem anodes containing organic PM6:D18:L8-BO and PTQ10:GS-ISO photoactive layers, we achieve a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 5%. These results pave the way towards high-efficiency, stable and unassisted solar hydrogen generation by low-cost organic photoactive materials.
Date Issued
2025-05-01
Date Acceptance
2025-02-20
Citation
Nature Energy, 2025, 10 (5), pp.581-591
ISSN
2058-7546
Publisher
Nature Research
Start Page
581
End Page
591
Journal / Book Title
Nature Energy
Volume
10
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2025-03-18