Surface Passivation of GaN Nanowires for Enhanced Photoelectrochemical Water-Splitting
Type
ArticleAuthors
Varadhan, PurushothamanFu, Hui-Chun

Priante, Davide

Duran Retamal, Jose Ramon
Zhao, Chao

Ebaid, Mohamed

Ng, Tien Khee

Ajia, Idris A.

Mitra, Somak

Roqan, Iman S.

Ooi, Boon S.

He, Jr-Hau

KAUST Department
Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) DivisionElectrical Engineering Program
KAUST Solar Center (KSC)
Material Science and Engineering Program
Nano Energy Lab
Photonics Laboratory
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Semiconductor and Material Spectroscopy (SMS) Laboratory
Date
2017-02-14Online Publication Date
2017-02-14Print Publication Date
2017-03-08Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/623915
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Hydrogen production via photoelectrochemical water-splitting is a key source of clean and sustainable energy. The use of one-dimensional nanostructures as photoelectrodes is desirable for photoelectrochemical water-splitting applications due to the ultralarge surface areas, lateral carrier extraction schemes, and superior light-harvesting capabilities. However, the unavoidable surface states of nanostructured materials create additional charge carrier trapping centers and energy barriers at the semiconductor-electrolyte interface, which severely reduce the solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency. In this work, we address the issue of surface states in GaN nanowire photoelectrodes by employing a simple and low-cost surface treatment method, which utilizes an organic thiol compound (i.e., 1,2-ethanedithiol). The surface-treated photocathode showed an enhanced photocurrent density of −31 mA/cm at −0.2 V versus RHE with an incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency of 18.3%, whereas untreated nanowires yielded only 8.1% efficiency. Furthermore, the surface passivation provides enhanced photoelectrochemical stability as surface-treated nanowires retained ∼80% of their initial photocurrent value and produced 8000 μmol of gas molecules over 55 h at acidic conditions (pH ∼ 0), whereas the untreated nanowires demonstrated only <4 h of photoelectrochemical stability. These findings shed new light on the importance of surface passivation of nanostructured photoelectrodes for photoelectrochemical applications.Citation
Varadhan P, Fu H-C, Priante D, Retamal JRD, Zhao C, et al. (2017) Surface Passivation of GaN Nanowires for Enhanced Photoelectrochemical Water-Splitting. Nano Letters 17: 1520–1528. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b04559.Sponsors
KACST-TIC-R2-FP-008 J.H.H. greatly acknowledges the baseline funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the seed funds from the KAUST Solar Center. B.S.O. and T.K.N. acknowledge the financial support from King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Grant KACSTTIC R2-FP-008. J.H.H. and V.P. sincerely thank Dr. Ahad Ali Syed and Dr. Xian Bin Wang of the Nanofabrication Core Laboratories, KAUST for their support with atomic layer deposition.Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)Journal
Nano LettersAdditional Links
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b04559ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b04559