Abstract
Nanocrystalline undoped and Cr-doped PbS thin films were prepared on glass substrates by a simple chemical bath deposition method. The X-ray diffraction analyses of the films showed their polycrystalline nature with cubic structure and preferential growth along the (111) orientation. Cr incorporation decreases the average PbS crystallite size from 59.97 to 37.59 nm, whereas the strain and dislocation density showed an increasing trend. The atomic ratio of doping for Cr is about 0.63, 1.75, and 4.70% according to energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy. Morphological analysis showed that the average sizes of nanoclusters decreased from 73 to 41 nm as the Cr concentration increased. The optical band gap values are increased with increasing Cr doping. The photoelectrochemical (PEC) behaviors and the stability of the Cr doped PbS photoelectrodes were studied in 0.3 M Na2SO3 electrolyte solution. Also, the incident photon-to-current efficiency and applied bias photon-to-current efficiency are calculated and showed optimized values of 13.5% and 1.44% at 0.68 V and 390 nm. Moreover, the optimized electrode shows high chemical stability and a long lifetime. Finally, the effect of temperature on the PEC behaviors is evaluated and the different thermodynamic parameters are calculated.
Highlights
Today, the energy crisis is one of the big problems facing humanity
The hydrogen can react with oxygen in the air to release energy and produce water as a by-product
The efficiency of PEC for hydrogen production depends on the performance of photoelectrodes such as its ability of light absorption and charge separation surface area for the electrochemical reactions.[4,5]
Summary
PbS has the efficient light-absorbing capacity from the visible to near-infrared due to the bandgap of PbS can be tuned across visible to NIR region.[10,11] PbS has good photocatalytic efficiency of hydrogen production.[12]. The Cr can enhance the interaction with light because it possesses surface plasmon interactions.[29] chromium metal crystallizes as a body-centered cubic lattice with a lower energy of the high spin con guration. It has abundant electrons in the outer shell of its electronic con guration. The photoelectrochemical activity of photoelectrodes such as TiO2 and Fe2O3 show signi cant enhancement by doping with Cr due to an improvement in charge carrier properties.[33] To the best of our knowledge, the photoelectrochemical studies on the Cr-doped PbS thin lms have not been reported in the literature. The photoelectrochemical behaviors of the Cr-doped PbS lms for the generation of H2 under visible irradiations are addressed
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