Jiangping Jing,Zhuoyuan Chen,Yuyu Bu,Mengmeng Sun,Wenqiang Zheng,Weibing Li
SrTiO 3 is a promising material for the photoelectrochemical (PEC) cathodic protection technology due to its intrinsic band structure . Its disadvantage of light absorption only in the ultraviolet region can be effectively solved by Cr doping. The Cr dopant usually exists as two states of Cr 3+ and Cr 6+ , among which the latter one usually behaves as the trapping center for the photoinduced electrons and leads to the decrease of the PEC performance. In this paper, a hydrogen treatment process is performed on the Cr-doped SrTiO 3 to reduce the Cr 6+ . It is verified that hydrogen treatment reduces Cr 6+ to Cr 3+ , leading to the increase of the concentration of the charge carriers and the decrease of the charge transfer resistance. And also, hydrogen treatment induces the formation of oxygen vacancy , which leads to the negative shift of conduction band potential and the increase of the concentration of the charge carriers. The effect of the hydrogen treatment temperature is further studied in this work. Higher temperature will promote the reduction degree of Cr 6+ and increase the concentration of oxygen vacancy . However, hydrogen treatment with excessively high temperature will induce too high concentration of oxygen vacancy, which would act as the recombination centers of the photogenerated charge carriers, suppress the mobility conduction and thus lead to the decrease of the PEC performance. Therefore, benefiting from the Cr 6+ reduction and modification with appropriate concentration of oxygen vacancy, the Cr-doped SrTiO 3 with hydrogen treatment at 250 °C shows the optimal PEC cathodic protection performance in NaCl solution.
Few-layer tin (Sn)-based nanosheets (NSs) with a thickness of ≈2.5 nm are successfully prepared using a modified liquid phase exfoliation (LPE) method. Here the first exploration of photo-electrochemical (PEC) and nonlinear properties of Sn NSs is presented. The results demonstrate that the PEC properties are tunable under different experimental conditions. Additionally, Sn NSs are shown to exhibit a unique self-powered PEC performance, maintaining a good long-term stability for up to 1 month. Using electron spin resonance, active species, such as hydroxyl radicals (·OH), superoxide radicals (·O 2 − ), and holes (h + ), are detected during operations, providing a deeper understanding of the working mechanism. Furthermore, measurements of nonlinear response reveal that Sn NSs can be effective for all-optical modulation, as it enables the realization of all-optical switching through excitation spatial cross-phase modulation (SXPM). These findings present new research insights and potential applications of Sn NSs in optoelectronics.
The charge separation/transport efficiency is relatively high in thin-film hematite photoanodes in which the distance for charge transport is short, but simultaneously the high loss of light absorption due to transmission is confronted. To increase light absorption in thin-film Fe2O3:Ti, commercial substrates such as Cu foil, Ag foil, and a mirror are adopted acting as back-reflectors and individually integrated with the Fe2O3:Ti electrode. The promotion effect of the commercial back-reflectors on the light absorption efficiency and photoelectrochemical (PEC) performance of the hydrothermally prepared Fe2O3:Ti electrodes with a variety of film thicknesses is investigated. As a result, Ag foil and the mirror show favorable and equal efficacy while the promoting effect of Cu foil is limited. In addition, the photocurrent increment achieved by the Ag back-reflector decreases linearly along with the logarithmic of the film thickness and the optimized film thickness of the Fe2O3:Ti electrode is decreased from 520 to 290 nm. The high durability of Ag foil in the alkaline electrolyte during solar light irradiation is demonstrated. Furthermore, the reflective substrate also shows a promotion effect on the BiVO4 photoanode and CuBi2O4 photocathode, as well as the unbiased photocurrent from a tandem cell constituted by TiO2 and CuBi2O4.