Direct Synthesis of Molybdenum Phosphide Nanorods on Silicon Using Graphene at the Heterointerface for Efficient Photoelectrochemical Water Reduction

• 来源期刊: 纳微快报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2021,（5）
• 页码范围: 135-150
• 页数: 16页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Transition metal phosphides (TMPs) and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been widely investigated as photoelectrochemi-cal (PEC) catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Using high-temperature processes to get crys-tallized compounds with large-area uniformity, it is still challenging to directly synthesize these catalysts on silicon photocathodes due to chemical incompat-ibility at the heterointerface. Here, a graphene inter-layer is applied between p-Si and MoP nanorods to enable fully engineered interfaces without forming ametallic secondary compound that absorbs a parasitic light and provides an inefficient electron path for hydrogen evolution. Furthermore, the graphene facilitates the photogenerated electrons to rapidly transfer by creating Mo-O-C covalent bondings and energetically favorable band bending. With a bridging role of graphene, numerous active sites and anti-reflectance of MoP nanorods lead to significantly improved PEC-HER performance with a high photocurrent density of 21.8 mA cm?2 at 0 V versus RHE and high stability. Besides, low depend-ence on pH and temperature is observed with MoP nanorods incorporated photocathodes, which is desirable for practical use as a part of PEC cells. These results indicate that the direct synthesis of TMPs and TMDs enabled by graphene interlayer is a new promising way to fabricate Si-based photocathodes with high-quality interfaces and superior HER performance.