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

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.