Issue 5, 2018

Highly-ordered silicon nanowire arrays for photoelectrochemical hydrogen evolution: an investigation on the effect of wire diameter, length and inter-wire spacing

Abstract

Vertically-aligned, highly-ordered silicon nanowire (SiNW) array photocathodes are fabricated employing e-beam lithography followed by deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) of Si. The effect of structural parameters of SiNWs, including wire diameter, length and inter-wire spacing, on their photoelectrocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance has been systematically investigated. Within the range of dimensions under study, the SiNW photocathode with a wire diameter of 200 nm, a length of 1 μm and an inter-wire spacing of 175 nm shows the best performance exhibiting a maximal saturated photocurrent density of 52 mA cm−2 and an onset potential (@−1 mA cm−2) of −0.17 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode. These lithography-patterned SiNWs with homogeneous structural parameters can help establish an unobscured structure–activity relation and facilitate Si-based photoelectrode design.

Graphical abstract: Highly-ordered silicon nanowire arrays for photoelectrochemical hydrogen evolution: an investigation on the effect of wire diameter, length and inter-wire spacing

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
08 дек 2017
Accepted
07 мар 2018
First published
08 мар 2018

Sustainable Energy Fuels, 2018,2, 978-982

Highly-ordered silicon nanowire arrays for photoelectrochemical hydrogen evolution: an investigation on the effect of wire diameter, length and inter-wire spacing

S. M. Thalluri, J. Borme, D. Xiong, J. Xu, W. Li, I. Amorim, P. Alpuim, J. Gaspar, H. Fonseca, L. Qiao and L. Liu, Sustainable Energy Fuels, 2018, 2, 978 DOI: 10.1039/C7SE00591A

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements