Thiourea-assisted coating of dispersed copper electrocatalysts on Si photocathodes for solar hydrogen production

• 来源期刊: 能源化学
• 年，卷（期）: 2020,（1）
• 页码范围: 75-80
• 页数: 6页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Photoelectrochemical water splitting can convert solar energy into clean hydrogen energy for storage.It is desirable to explore non-precious electrocatalysts for practical applications of a photoelectrode in a large scale.Here,we developed a facile spin-coating and in-situ photoelectrochemical reduction method to prepare a dispersed Cu electrocatalyst on a Si photocathode,which improves the performance remarkably.We find that thiourea in the precursor solution for spin-coating plays an important role in obtaining dispersed Cu particles on the surface of a Si photoelectrode.With thiourea in the precursor,the Cu/Si photocathode shows higher performance than the one without thiourea.Moreover,the Cu/Si photocathode also indicates good stability after 16 h illumination.