Origin of improved photoelectrochemical water splitting in mixed perovskite oxides
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Owing to the versatility in their chemical and physical properties, transition metal perovskite oxides have emerged as a new category of highly efficient photocatalysts for photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. Here, to understand the underlying mechanism for the enhanced PEC water splitting in mixed perovskites, ideal epitaxial thin films of the BiFeO3–SrTiO3 system are explored. The electronic structure and carrier dynamics are determined from both experiment and density‐functional theory calculations. The intrinsic phenomena are measured in this ideal system, contrasting to commonly studied polycrystalline solid solutions where extrinsic structural features obscure the intrinsic phenomena. It is determined that when SrTiO3 is added to BiFeO3 the conduction band minimum position is raised and an exponential tail of trap states from hybridized Ti 3d and Fe 3d orbitals emerges near the conduction band edge. The presence of these trap states strongly suppresses the fast electron–hole recombination and improves the photocurrent density in the visible‐light region, up to 16× at 0 VRHE compared to the pure end member compositions. This work provides a new design approach for optimizing the PEC performance in mixed perovksite oxides.
Date Issued
2018-11-05
Date Acceptance
2018-09-24
Citation
Advanced Energy Materials, 2018, 8 (31), pp.1-7
ISSN
1614-6832
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
1
End Page
7
Journal / Book Title
Advanced Energy Materials
Volume
8
Issue
31
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Authors. Published by WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Sponsor
Magdalene College, University of Cambridge
Identifier
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aenm.201801972
Subjects
0303 Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry
0912 Materials Engineering
0915 Interdisciplinary Engineering
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2018-09-24