Issue 19, 2016

Solar fuel photoanodes prepared by inkjet printing of copper vanadates

Abstract

Widespread deployment of solar fuel generators requires the development of efficient and scalable functional materials, especially for photoelectrocatalysis of the oxygen evolution reaction. Metal oxides comprise the most promising class of photoanode materials, but no known material meets the demanding photoelectrochemical requirements. Copper vanadates have recently been identified as a promising class of photoanode materials with several phases exhibiting an indirect band gap near 2 eV and stable photoelectrocatalysis of the oxygen evolution reaction in a pH 9.2 electrolyte. By employing combinatorial inkjet printing of metal precursors and applying both calcination and rapid thermal processing, we characterize the phase behaviour of the entire CuO–V2O5 composition space for different thermal treatments via automated analysis of approximately 100 000 Raman spectra acquired using a novel Raman imaging technique. These results enable the establishment of structure–property relationships for optical absorption and photoelectrochemical properties, revealing that highly active photoelectrocatalysts containing α-Cu2V2O7 or α-CuV2O6 can be prepared using scalable solution processing techniques. An additional discovery results from the formation of an off-stoichiometric β-Cu2V2O7 material that exhibits high photoelectroactivity in the presence of a ferri/ferrocyanide redox couple with excellent stability in a pH 13 electrolyte, demonstrating that copper vanadates may be viable photoanodes in strong alkaline electrolytes.

Graphical abstract: Solar fuel photoanodes prepared by inkjet printing of copper vanadates

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
10 feb 2016
Accepted
11 apr 2016
First published
11 apr 2016
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2016,4, 7483-7494

Solar fuel photoanodes prepared by inkjet printing of copper vanadates

P. F. Newhouse, D. A. Boyd, A. Shinde, D. Guevarra, L. Zhou, E. Soedarmadji, G. Li, J. B. Neaton and J. M. Gregoire, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2016, 4, 7483 DOI: 10.1039/C6TA01252C

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