High water oxidation performance of W-Doped BiVO4 photoanodes coupled to V2O5 rods as a photoabsorber and hole carrier.

Abstract

Monoclinic BiVO4 is recognized as a promising photoanode for water oxidation, but its relatively wide bandgap energy (Eg ≈2.5 eV) and poor charge transport limit the light absorption (ηabs) and charge separation (ηsep) efficiencies, thus resulting in low photocurrents. To solve these drawbacks, here the ηabs × ηsep product has been decoupled by combining W‐doped BiVO4 and V2O5 rods (Eg ≈2.1 eV) for simultaneously increasing the light harvesting and the charge separation in photoanodes under back‐side illumination. In this strategy, V2O5 rods maximize the light absorption and hole transport throughout the W‐BiVO4 film, making more holes to achieve the V2O5/W‐BiVO4/H2O interface to trigger the water oxidation reaction with photocurrents as high as 6.6 mA cm−2 at 1.23 VRHE after 2 h reaction. Notably, under back‐side illumination, the W‐BiVO4/V2O5 photoanode exhibited ηabs × ηsep of 74.5 and 93.0% at 0.5 and 1.23 VRHE, respectively, the highest values reported up to date for BiVO4‐based photoelectrodes. This simple strategy brings us closer to develop efficient photoanodes for photoelectrochemical water splitting devices.