Mechanistic Understanding of Material Transformations and Charge Transport at the Nanoscale in Solar Water Splitting Via Advanced Characterization Techniques

Abstract

Stable, cost effective, and efficient solar water splitting is the “Holy Grail” for sustainable clean fuels from two most abundant resources, sunlight and water. This approach requires the combination of light absorbers and surface coating to perform catalytic reactions and enhance the stability and charge transport. Thus, accurate characterization of the material transformations and charge transport mechanism is critical to enable design and development of new functional systems. In our approach, photoconductive atomic force microscopy and Kelvin probe measurements combined with photoelectrochemistry were developed to correlate morphological and functional heterogeneity in metal oxides. Furthermore, the pc-AFM combined with other spectroscopies, e.g., X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, and electron energy loss spectroscopy were carried out on nitrides materials to fundamentally understand stability during operating conditions.