Abstract
Different chemical routes for obtaining nanostructured WO 3 on transparent conductive oxides have been tried by considering the Santato-Augustynski recipe as a main guideline. The preparation started from tungstate salts as precursors and involved different organic dispersing agents. Calcination in air at 550 °C produced the final oxide. Aim of this work is to test the oxide materials as photoanodes for the photo-electrochemical water splitting. WO 3 is a wide bandgap semiconductor, able to transport photogenerated carriers under irradiation, provided that it has a good crystalline structure. The morphology and the crystal size of the obtained WO 3 nanoparticles have been investigated by SEM and XRD. This work shows that the particle size of the WO 3 film decreases with increase in molecular weight of the organic dispersing agents. The current–voltage characteristic curves of WO 3-based electrodes have been obtained by biasing a photo-electrochemical cell with an external voltage ramp, both in the dark and under simulated solar irradiation. Results showed that under incident irradiance a noticeable photocurrent density is obtained with a reasonably steep current–voltage slope and with a plateau current of the order of 1.6–1.8 mA/cm 2 under incident 0.14 W/cm 2 AM 1.5 irradiation.
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