High-efficiency hydrogen production through photoelectrochemical(PEC)water splitting has emerged as a promising solution to address current global energy challenges.Ⅲ-nitride semiconductor photoelectrodes with nanost...High-efficiency hydrogen production through photoelectrochemical(PEC)water splitting has emerged as a promising solution to address current global energy challenges.Ⅲ-nitride semiconductor photoelectrodes with nanostructures have demonstrated great potential in the near future due to their high light absorption,tunable direct band gap,and strong physicochemical stability.However,several issues,including surface trapping centers,surface Fermi level pinning,and surface band bending,need to be addressed.In this work,enhanced photovoltaic properties have been achieved using gallium nitride(GaN)nanowires(NWs)photoelectrodes by adopting an alkaline solution surface treatment method to reduce the surface states.It was found that surface oxides on NWs can be removed by an alkaline solution treatment without changing the surface morphology through X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS),scanning electron microscopy(SEM)and other characterization methods.These findings provide new insights to the development of high-efficiency photoelectrodes for new energy source applications.展开更多
基金funded by the National Key R&D Program of China(No.2021YFB3601600)Innovation Support Programme(Soft Science Research)Project Achievements of Jiangsu Province(No.BK20231514)+3 种基金the National Nature Science Foundation of China(Nos.61974062,62004104)the Leading-edge Technology Program of Jiangsu Natural Science Foundation(No.BE2021008–2)The Fundamental Research Foundation for the Central UniversitiesCollaborative Innovation Center of Solid-State Lighting and Energy-Saving Electronics。
文摘High-efficiency hydrogen production through photoelectrochemical(PEC)water splitting has emerged as a promising solution to address current global energy challenges.Ⅲ-nitride semiconductor photoelectrodes with nanostructures have demonstrated great potential in the near future due to their high light absorption,tunable direct band gap,and strong physicochemical stability.However,several issues,including surface trapping centers,surface Fermi level pinning,and surface band bending,need to be addressed.In this work,enhanced photovoltaic properties have been achieved using gallium nitride(GaN)nanowires(NWs)photoelectrodes by adopting an alkaline solution surface treatment method to reduce the surface states.It was found that surface oxides on NWs can be removed by an alkaline solution treatment without changing the surface morphology through X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS),scanning electron microscopy(SEM)and other characterization methods.These findings provide new insights to the development of high-efficiency photoelectrodes for new energy source applications.
