Affiliation:
1. Institut de Chimie Physique Université Paris‐Saclay UMR 8000 CNRS Orsay 91405 France
2. Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux d'Orsay(ICMMO) Université Paris‐Saclay UMR 8182 CNRS Orsay 91405 France
Abstract
AbstractIntroducing ferroelectric polarization has shown great potential to facilitate interfacial charge separation in photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. However, unambiguous evidence of the actual influence of spontaneous ferroelectric polarization, as compared to heterojunction formation, on electron extraction and PEC water splitting is still lacking to date. Herein, core‐shell BaTiO3/TiO2 nanostructures are designed as photoanodes based on paraelectric cubic and ferroelectric tetragonal phases BaTiO3 (BTO) perovskite. The cubic and tetragonal crystalline phases are stabilized using selected elaboration methods. Compared to the paraelectric cubic (c‐BTO), the ferroelectric tetragonal (t‐BTO) leads to a favorable ferroelectric polarization, enhancing directional charge separation and as a consequence to increased photocurrent up to a factor of 1.95. More interestingly, the charge separation efficiency can be tuned by applying positive or negative polarization, with the highest charge separation obtained for the positive one. When loading Ni(OH)2 as a cocatalyst on the t‐BTO@TiO2 photoanode, the Ni(OH)2/TiO2/t‐BTO exhibits a high performance and superior stability toward PEC water oxidation with a photocurrent almost 6.7 times that of the reference SiO2@TiO2. The proposed facilitation may open an avenue to engineer charge separation and transport for high‐performance PEC water oxidation.
Funder
Agence Nationale de la Recherche