Robust Photoelectrochemical Oxygen Evolution with N, Fe–CoS2 Nanorod Arrays

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Abstract
Photoelectrochemical water splitting is a promising approach to enhance the efficiency of water splitting. However, it is still challenging to develop an efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalyst that can be coupled with light, due to inefficient light utilization. Here we demonstrate that N, Fe-co-doped CoS2 (N, Fe-CoS2) nanorod arrays can act as a highly efficient photo-coupled electrochemical OER catalyst. In dark condition, the doped CoS2 anode on self-supported stainless steel (SS) mesh shows a small OER overpotential (215 mV) at a current density of 10 mA cm-2, a reduced Tafel slope (43.2 mV dec-1) and negligible activity decay after 10,000 cycles. Upon visible-NIR light illumination, the N-doped anode exhibits superior photoelectrochemical performance due to the enhanced photoresponse, excellent light harvesting ability and promoted interfacial kinetics of charge separation. Our well-designed photoelectrochemical OER electrode can not only serve as light absorption semiconductor but also the active catalytic site for OER reaction, the electrode composed by single phase can efficiently avoid photo-carrier recombination at the grain boundary. This study provides an insight on photoanode synthesis for photoelectrochemical OER and offers a guidance on future electrocatalyst design.
Funding Information
  • Hong Kong Polytechnic University (G-YW2A)

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