Progress on ternary oxide-based photoanodes for use in photoelectrochemical cells for solar water splitting

Abstract

Solar water splitting using photoelectrochemical cells (PECs) has emerged as one of the most promising routes to produce hydrogen as a clean and renewable fuel source. Among various semiconductors that have been considered as photoelectrodes for use in PECs, oxide-based photoanodes are particularly attractive because of their stability in aqueous media in addition to inexpensive and facile processing compared to other types of semiconductors. However, they typically suffer from poor charge carrier separation and transport. In the past few years, there has been tremendous progress in developing ternary oxide-based photoelectrodes, specifically, photoanodes. The use of ternary oxides provides more opportunities to tune the composition and electronic structure of the photoelectrode compared to binary oxides, thus providing more freedom to tune the photoelectrochemical properties. In this article, we outline the important characteristics to analyze when evaluating photoanodes and review the major recent progress made on the development of ternary oxide-based photoanodes. For each system, we highlight the favorable and unfavorable features and summarize the strategies utilized to address the challenges associated with each material. Finally, by combining our analyses of all the photoanodes surveyed in this review, we provide possible future research directions for each compound and an outlook for constructing more efficient oxide-based PECs. Overall, this review will provide a critical overview of current ternary oxide-based photoanodes and will serve as a platform for the design of future oxide-based PECs.