article · ACS Applied Energy Materials
A new fabrication approach creates a high-performance ternary photoanode designed for solar-driven hydrogen generation through photoelectrochemical water splitting. The structure combines titanium dioxide, graphitic carbon nitride, and zinc oxide nanorods into a direct Z-scheme heterostructure. Fabricated by electrodepositing titanium dioxide onto fluorine-doped tin oxide and airbrushing an in situ grown zinc oxide and carbon nitride composite, the design establishes strong interfacial adhesion and expands active surface area. This configuration promotes fast separation of photogenerated charge carriers, slows down charge recombination, and lowers internal resistance. Under testing at 1.23 volts versus a reversible hydrogen electrode, the resulting ternary photoanode delivered substantial photocurrent enhancements, outperforming unmodified single materials and binary combinations by up to 160-fold. Density functional theory calculations confirmed that the ternary junction significantly enhances charge transfer efficiency during photocatalytic reactions.
Solar-powered water splitting provides a clean pathway to produce green hydrogen fuel from water and sunlight. However, inefficient charge movement often limits system performance. By combining three complementary materials into a specialised architecture that suppresses charge loss and improves electrical flow, this method offers a viable strategy for designing more responsive photoanodes for clean energy conversion.
This technology could support developers of green hydrogen production hardware and solar water-splitting systems. By outlining a scalable preparation method using electrodeposition and airbrushing, the work demonstrates enhanced photoanode performance. Because the findings are based on laboratory-scale material characterisation and electrochemical measurements, the technology remains at an early stage of research and development before it can be integrated into commercial electrolysers.
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In this study, we developed an approach to enhance the separation and transfer of charge carriers for photoelectrochemical water splitting in solar-driven hydrogen production. We achieved this by designing a highly efficient Z-scheme TiO2/g-C3N4/ZnO photoanode. The process involved electrodepositing a thin TiO2 layer on FTO and optimizing the in situ ZnO implantation onto g-C3N4. These composites were confirmed by XRD, SEM, EDX, and TEM measurements. The growth of ZnO on g-C3N4 resulted in strong chemical adhesion between the interface of ZnO and g-C3N4, as supported by XPS data, and increased active surface area, as demonstrated by BET. The composition of ZnO and g-C3N4 facilitated rapid charge separation and retarded change recombination through directional charge migration and decreased charge resistance, as evidenced by PEIS and TRPL measurements. Our airbrushing procedure for fabricating the g-C3N4/ZnO composite on TiO2 also enhanced the charge collection efficiency, enabling us to construct a high-performance photoanode. The Z-scheme-type charge migration route was verified by EPR spectroscopy by trapping the radicals generated by charges and holes. PEC-WS measurements showed that TiO2/g-C3N4/ZnO heterostructure improved the produced photocurrent by about 160-, 40-, 20-, 8-, 2-, and 2-fold, relative to pristine g-C3N4, pristine ZnO nanorods, ZnO/g-C3N4 composite, pristine TiO2, TiO2/ZnO, and TiO2/g-C3N4, respectively, versus reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) at 1.23 V. The charge carriers’ separation and injection measurements showed that the fabrication of this ternary photoanode remarkably improved the PEC-WS performance. DFT results contributed to a deeper understanding of the mechanism of the photocatalytic process and confirmed that the as-fabricated ternary heterojunction promoted the separation/transfer efficiency of the photogenerated charge carriers, thereby promoting the activity of the photocatalytic process. This work could pave the way for better fabrication of ternary-based photoanodes.
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DOI: 10.1021/acsaem.3c01992
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