Enhanced Solar Water Splitting by Swift Charge Separation in Au/FeOOH Sandwiched Single Crystalline Fe$_2$O$_3$ Nanoflake Photoelectrodes

In this work, single crystalline $α$-Fe$_2$O$_3$ nanoflakes (NFs) are formed in a highly dense array by Au seeding of a Fe substrate by a thermal oxidation technique. The NFs are conformally decorated with a thin FeOOH cocatalyst layer. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) measurements show that this photoanode with the $α$-Fe$_2$O$_3$/FeOOH NFs rooted on the Au/Fe structure exhibits a significantly enhanced PEC water oxidation performance compared to the plain $α$-Fe$_2$O$_3$ nanostructure on the Fe substrate. The $α$-Fe$_2$O$_3$/FeOOH NFs on Au/Fe photoanode yields a photocurrent density of 3.1 mA cm-2 at 1.5 VRHE, and a remarkably low onset potential of 0.5-0.6 VRHE in 1 M KOH under AM 1.5G (100 mW cm-2) simulated sunlight illumination. The enhancement in PEC performance can be attributed to a synergistic effect of the FeOOH top decoration and Au under-layer. While FeOOH facilitates hole transfer at the interface of electrode/electrolyte, the Au layer provides a sink for the electron transport to the back contact: this leads overall to a drastically improved charge-separation efficiency in the single crystalline $α$-Fe$_2$O$_3$ NF photoanode.

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