Construction of Highly Ordered Three-dimensional Heterostructured Electrodes for Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting under Visible and Infrared Light

• Applicant: Professor Yong Lei, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Synthesis and Properties of Functional Materials
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 269598117

• Final Report Year: 2019

Final Report Abstract

Solar-driven hydrogen production represents the promising solution to address the challenging issues about climate change concerns, increasing global energy demand, and limited supply of fossil fuels, but still suffers from the low energy conversion efficiency. The utilization of highly ordered three-dimensional (3D) structures at nanoscale is an important strategy to improve the photoelectric conversion efficiency because it allows for the combination of the photoelectrochemical (PEC) properties from the photo-active materials and the structural advantages from the ordered configuration of nanoarrays. By further incorporating with the component that can expand the light absorption range, such kind of heterostructures at nanoscale would lead to the increase of the photoelectric conversion efficiency. To this end, in this Sino-German collaborative research project, highly ordered 3D nanoarrays have been rationally designed and fabricated though template-assisted fabrication approaches based on nanoimprinted anodic alumina oxide (AAO) nanoporous and polystyrene (PS) sphere templates, and the enhancement of light absorption and PEC performance have been derived from the precise control over both the structural features (e.g. dimensions, morphologies) and the compositions of the highly-ordered 3D nanoarrays. Particularly, a brand-new nanostructuring concept to achieve diverse binary nanostructure arrays with high degree of controllability for each of the sub-components, including material, dimension and morphology have been successfully developed from a distinctive binary-pore AAO template that includes two dissimilar sets of nanopores in one matrix. With binarynanostructuring concept, the morphologies and compositions of each sub-component in the matrix can be further tailored independently to synthetically contribute to the PEC performance improvement. Moreover, the unique and controllable features of binary nanoarrays could generate new spectral features that can be useful to tailor the optical response of the nanoarrays for potential applications in biosensing or light absorption. In addition to the PEC applications, the highly-ordered 3D nanoarrays also have been studied and exhibited great potentials as the promising building blocks to design and construct nanoelectrodes for electrochemical energy devices with high energy storage and conversion capability, including sodium ion batteries, supercapacitors, and electrocatalytic water splitting, etc. Besides the fruitful achievements in scientific cooperation, the successful implement of this collaborative research project also established active communication and cooperation between the German and Chinese groups to accelerate the exchange of new scientific knowledge among young scientists and Ph.D. students from Germany and China, and thus lays a foundation for the bilateral cooperation in the future.

Publications

• Adv. Energy Mater. 6 (2016) 1502514
  Y. Xu, M. Zhou, Y. Lei
  
• Adv. Energy Mater. 6 (2016) 1600448
  M. Zhou, Y. Xu, J. Xiang, C. Wang, L. Liang, Y. Fang, L. Wen, Y. Mi, Y. Lei
  
• Appl. Catal. B: Environ. 198 (2016) 398
  D. Cao, N. Nasori, Z. Wang, L. Wen, R. Xu, Y. Mi, Y. Lei
  
• ACS Nano 11 (2017) 7382
  R. Xu, L. Wen, Z. Wang, H. Zhao, S. Xu, Y. Mi, Y. Xu, M. Sommerfeld, Y. Fang, Y. Lei
  
• Nano Energy 38 (2017) 304
  Y. Xu, M. Zhou, C. Zhang, C. Wang, L. Liang, Y. Fang, M. Wu, L. Cheng, Y. Lei
  
• Nano Res. 10 (3189) 2017
  L. Liang, Y. Xu, L. Wen, Y. Li, M. Zhou, C. Wang, H. Zhao, U. Kaiser, Y. Lei
  
• Nat. Nanotechnol. 12 (2017) 244
  L. Wen, R. Xu, Y. Mi, Y. Lei
  
• Adv. Funct. Mater. 28 (2018) 1806284
  D. Li, H. Zhao, L. Li, B. Mao, M. Chen, H. Shen, W. Shi, D. Jiang, Y. Lei
  
• Adv. Funct. Mater. 28 (2018), 1705107
  L. Liu, H. Zhao, Y. Wang, Y. Fang, J. Xie, Y. Lei
  
• Nano Today 20 (2018) 33
  M. Zhou, Y. Xu, Y. Lei
  
• Appl. Catal. B: Environ. 244 (2019) 87
  L. Liu, D. Li, H. Zhao, A. Dimitrova, L. Li, Y. Fang, S. Krischok, W. Shi, Y. Lei