Simple eco-friendly synthesis of the surfactant free SnS nanocrystal toward the photoelectrochemical cell application.

Xiaoguang Huang,Hyo Jin Hong,Jean-Charles Vanel,Wan Gil Jung,Jin Woo Choi,Peinian Wu,Heechul Woo,Bong-Joong Kim

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-16445-8

Abstract

A simple, low cost, non-toxic and eco-friendly pathway for synthesizing efficient sunlight-driven tin sulfide photocatalyst was studied. SnS nanocrystals were prepared by using mechanical method. The bulk SnS was obtained by evaporation of SnS nanocrystal solution. The synthesized samples were characterized by using XRD, SEM, TEM, UV-vis, and Raman analyses. Well crystallized SnS nanocrystals were verified and the electrochemical characterization was also performed under visible light irradiation. The SnS nanocrystals have shown remarkable photocurrent density of 7.6 mA cm−2 under 100 mW cm−2 which is about 10 times larger than that of the bulk SnS under notably stable operation conditions. Furthermore, the SnS nanocrystals presented higher stability than the bulk form. The IPCE(Incident photon to current conversion efficiency) of 9.3% at 420 nm was obtained for SnS nanocrystal photoanode which is strikingly higher than that of bulk SnS, 0.78%. This work suggests that the enhancement of reacting area by using SnS nanocrystal absorbers could give rise to the improvement of photoelectrochemical cell efficiency.

Highlights

Hydrogen is a non-polluting, efficient and renewable energy carrier, which has been strongly chased to mitigate the global issue, like environmental deterioration and increasing energy scarcity
The result confirmed the presence of highly pure surfactant free tin sulfide (SnS) nanocrystals phase without any impurity
The SnS nanocrystal photoanode possessed an incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) of 9.3% at 420 nm, strikingly higher than the 0.78% efficiency of bulk sample

Summary

Introduction

Hydrogen is a non-polluting, efficient and renewable energy carrier, which has been strongly chased to mitigate the global issue, like environmental deterioration and increasing energy scarcity. As such alternaives, nanostructured earth abundant materials have been studied and reported These materials have an enormous potential in energy conversion, mainly because of their high surface to volume ratio which provides increased photon collection area and lowers carrier recombination. Among these nanostructured materials, TiO210,11 or ZnO12,13 have received most attention in view of their nontoxicity and low cost. Tin (II) sulfide (SnS) has emerged as an attractive candidate for low cost catalytic materials of photovoltaic absorbers as well as photoelectrodes for solar water splitting because of their promising high electron (2.37 × 104 cm[2] V−1 s−1) and holes (7.35 × 104 cm[2] V−1 s−1) mobilities. To the best of our knowledge, the photocurrents in this work are higher than the any of previously reported SnS systems

Methods

Results

Conclusion