Perovskite photoanode for solar fuel production Dr Do Hyung Chun, Prof. Erwin Reisner Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW The development of the chemical industry has enabled the technical and economic flourishing of humanity over the last century. [1] However, the conventional fossil fuel based industrial structure has come at a price in recent times an energy crisis and climate change, which has to be transformed into renewable energy based systems. On the other hand, the accumulation of various wastes, including food, biomass, and plastics, also irreversibly damages the Earth. [2] To this end, artificial photosynthesishas emerged as a promising solution for generating fuels from CO 2 and H 2 O using solar energy. [3] Motivated by natural photosynthesis, significant efforts have been directed towards developing regenerable catalysts for H 2 O oxidation, coupled with catalysts for fuel production like the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) or CO 2 reduction (CO 2 R), utilizing synthetic chemistry. [4] Despite remarkable advancements in synthetic chemistry, certain challenges hinder commercialization due to limited light absorption and low reaction selectivity stemming from the inherent large bandgap (E g ) and complex reaction mechanisms. Since it was first reported as a light harvesting sensitizer in 2009, [5] halide perovskite (PVK) has received great attention as a next generation light absorber, thanks to its outstanding optoelectronic properties such as a high light absorption coefficient, long charge carrier diffusion length, and tunable E g . [6] After being utilized in solid state photovoltaic (PV) devices, the photoconversion efficiency (PCE) of PVK based PVs has dramatically increased in the last decade rivaling commercialized Si based PVs. Beyond producing electricity with PV devices, solar driven fuel production with PVK PV-electrocatalyst (PV-EC) systems has been developed by integrating ECs with PV devices. [7] Building on these successes, PVK-based soalr fuel production has achieved artificial photosynthesis based on PVKs by developing encapsulation strategies that enable their use as photoelectrodes in aqueous solutions. [8] In previous reports, an oxygen evolution reaction (OER) BiVO 4 photoanode is coupled with an hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) as well as CO 2 R reactions at the PVK photocathode to achieve thermodynamically demanding OER (>1.6 V, including overpotential). Nevertheless, the current density was limited by BiVO 4 with a large E g , implying that developing a single PVK based system will provide a significant boost in activity. In this report, solar-driven fuel production with a PVK based photoanode research was demonstrated. Starting with the development and optimization of PVK solar cells, photoelectrochemical reactions for fuel production such as water splitting and waste reforming are described. Ultimately, this research aims to build up bias-free PVK based photoelectrochemical fuel production systems. References
1. Colgan et al. 2023, doi:10.1146/annurev polisci 051421. 2. Schmidt et al. 2019,https://doi.org/10.1039/c9ee00223e. 3. Fang et al. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1039/c9cs00496c. 4. Dogutan et al. 2019,doi:10.1021/acs.accounts.9b00380. 5. Kojima et al. 2009,https://doi.org/10.1021/ja809598r. 6. Green et al. 2014, https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.134. 7. Luo et al. 2014,DOI: 10.1126/science.1258307. 8. Andrei et al. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0501-6.
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