3D-Printed Photoelectrochemical Cell and its Application in Evaluation of BiVO4 Photoanodes

Abstract

Sunlight-driven green hydrogen production is emerging as a promising contribution to carbon emission reduction, for which semiconductors as water splitting photocatalysts have arisen as potential materials to reach the worldwide climate goals at a low cost. As photoanode materials for oxygen evolution reaction (OER), bismuth-containing semiconducting metal oxides, such as BiVO4, Bi2WO6 and Bi2MoO6, have shown convincingly visible-light-driven photocatalytic activities due to their well-matching band gaps and redox potentials of valence/conduction band positions (1). In particular, BiVO4 demonstrated formidable photocatalytic performance for water splitting (2). However, BiVO4 often suffers from fast recombination of the photo-generated electron-hole pairs, which limits the electron flow in photoelectrochemical cells (3).