Earth abundant transition metal ferrite nanoparticles anchored ZnO nanorods as efficient and stable photoanodes for solar water splitting

• DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/abae9a
• Publication Date: 2020-08-12T22:31:35Z
• Authors: Dipanjan Maity; Keshab Karmakar; Dipika Mandal; Debashish Pal; Gobinda Gopal Khan; Kalyan Mandal
• Keywords: Nanorod; Photocurrent

Poor light absorption, severe surface charge recombination and fast degradation are the key challenges with ZnO nanostructures based electrodes for photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. Here, this study attempts to design an efficient durable nano-heterojunction photoelectrode by integrating earth abundant chemically stable transition metal spinel ferrites MFe2O4 (M = Co Ni) nano-particles on Nanorod arrays. The low band gap magnetic improve solar energy harvesting ability of in ultraviolet-visible region resulting a maximum increase 105% 190% photocurrent density applied bias photon-to-current efficiency, respectively, compared pristine nanorods. favourable type-II alignment at ferrites/ZnO provides significantly enhanced photo-generated carrier separation transfer, endowing excellent H2 evolution (743 891 μmol cm-2 h-1for ZnO/CoFe2O4 ZnO/NiFe2O4, respectively) photoanodes using sacrificial agent. hybrid deliver long term stability electrode against photocorrosion. This work demonstrates easy but effective strategy develop low-cost ferrites-based heterojunction electrodes, which offers PEC activity stability.