CuO/ZnO heterojunction nanoarrays for enhanced photoelectrochemical water oxidation

Abstract

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting offers a promising route for producing chemical energy from abundant solar energy, but a bottleneck remains for PEC practical applications because of the lack of efficient, stable and earth-abundant photoelectrodes. Here, we report simultaneous improvements in carrier separation and light harvesting by constructing p-n heterojunctions in CuO/ZnO nanorod arrays. The novelty of this work is developing a new strategy for preparing a CuO/ZnO p-n heterojunction photoanode for PEC water splitting, in which Cu(OH)2/ZnO is first prepared by a chemical solution strategy and then transformed into CuO/ZnO by annealing. The CuO/ZnO heterojunction photoanode exhibited a significant negative shift of 150 mV for the onset potential and an approximately 4-fold enhancement in the photocurrent at 1.23 V vs reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) compared with those of pristine ZnO NRs. This work offers a facile strategy for preparing oxide-based p-n heterojunction photoanodes for enhanced PEC water splitting.