TiO<sub>2</sub>-HfN Radial Nano-Heterojunction: A Hot Carrier Photoanode for Sunlight-Driven Water-Splitting

The lack of active, stable, earth-abundant, and visible-light absorbing materials to replace plasmonic noble metals is a critical obstacle for researchers in developing highly efficient and cost-effective photocatalytic systems. Herein, a core–shell nanotube catalyst was fabricated consisting of ato...

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Autores principales: Sheng Zeng, Triratna Muneshwar, Saralyn Riddell, Ajay Peter Manuel, Ehsan Vahidzadeh, Ryan Kisslinger, Pawan Kumar, Kazi Mohammad Monirul Alam, Alexander E. Kobryn, Sergey Gusarov, Kenneth C. Cadien, Karthik Shankar
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: MDPI AG 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/58f04f07932f470f9384114678bc21cb
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Sumario:The lack of active, stable, earth-abundant, and visible-light absorbing materials to replace plasmonic noble metals is a critical obstacle for researchers in developing highly efficient and cost-effective photocatalytic systems. Herein, a core–shell nanotube catalyst was fabricated consisting of atomic layer deposited HfN shell and anodic TiO<sub>2</sub> support layer with full-visible regime photoactivity for photoelectrochemical water splitting. The HfN active layer has two unique characteristics: (1) A large bandgap between optical and acoustic phonon modes and (2) No electronic bandgap, which allows a large population of long life-time hot carriers, which are used to enhance the photoelectrochemical performance. The photocurrent density (≈2.5 mA·cm<sup>−2</sup> at 1 V vs. Ag/AgCl) obtained in this study under AM 1.5G 1 Sun illumination is unprecedented, as it is superior to most existing plasmonic noble metal-decorated catalysts and surprisingly indicates a photocurrent response that extends to 730 nm. The result demonstrates the far-reaching application potential of replacing active HER/HOR noble metals such as Au, Ag, Pt, Pd, etc. with low-cost plasmonic ceramics.