The solar water splitting process assisted by semiconductor photocatalysts attracts growing research interests worldwide for the production of hydrogen as a clean and sustainable energy carrier. Due to their optical and electrical properties several oxynitride materials show great promise for the fabrication of efficient photocatalysts for solar water splitting. This study reports a comparative investigation of particle- and thin films-based photocatalysts using three different oxynitride materials. The absolute comparison of the photoelectrochemical activities favors the particle-based electrodes due to the better absorption properties and larger electrochemical surface area. However, thin films surpass the particle-based photoelectrodes due to their more suitable morphological features that improve the separation and mobility of the photo-generated charge carriers. Our analysis identifies what specific insights into the properties of materials can be achieved with the two complementary approaches.
@article{arxiv.1902.07482,
title = {Oxynitride Thin Films versus Particle-Based Photoanodes: a Comparative Study for Photoelectrochemical Solar Water Splitting},
author = {Fatima Haydous and Max Döbeli and Wenping Si and Friedrich Waag and Fei Li and Ekaterina Pomjakushina and Alexander Wokaun and Bilal Gökce and Daniele Pergolesi and Thomas Lippert},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.07482},
year = {2019}
}