• Toku, Yuhki
• Ju, Yang
• Kimura, Yasuhiro
• Mahmud, Md Sultan
• Gu, Shaojie

Abstract

<jats:p>Fe<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>O<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> holds promising <jats:italic>n</jats:italic>-type semiconductor material in the field of solar water splitting due to its excellent photocatalytic properties. However, the photoelectrochemical performance of Fe<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>O<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> is limited by its inherent properties suchas poor conductivity, and charge separation efficiency owing to its recombination rate. Therefore, researchers are more focused on nanostructuring, doping, and surface coating to overcome these issues of Fe<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>O<jats:sub>3</jats:sub>. In this study, we have investigated a low-cost way to fabricatea Ti coating layer on a high-density Fe<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>O<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> single-crystal nanowire array for solar water splitting. Firstly, we have prepared a high-density single-crystal Fe<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>O<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> nanowire array at lower temperatures by a new approach stress-induced atomic diffusionmethod. Thereafter, the prepared nanowire array was coated by Ti film using RF sputtering. The optimal film thickness of 13 nm titanium coatings layer into Fe<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>O<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> single crystal nanowire array exhibited a high photocurrent density of 1.36 mA/cm<jats:sup>2</jats:sup> at 1.23 V versusRHE and solar to hydrogen conversion efficiency (STH) of 1.67%, which could be resulting from adjusted optoelectronic properties of the nanowires.</jats:p>

Topics

• density
• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• single crystal
• semiconductor
• Hydrogen
• titanium