Cu-based p-type Oxide Photocathodes for Solar Hydrogen Production : a Study on Photoelectrochemical Performance and Stability

The actualization of a hydrogen economy requires cost-effective and environmentally benign solutions to hydrogen production. Chemical energy in the form of hydrogen is more interesting than electricity to satisfy our ever-increasing energy demand because it can be stored more easily. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is a carbon-neutral process which converts solar energy into chemical energy (hydrogen) using a light-absorbing semiconducting material to generate the necessary photovoltage to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. So far, record efficiencies in solar-to-hydrogen conversion have been achieved using p-type semiconductors, but only with very expensive materials. However, the spread of this technology relies on the development of semiconductor electrodes made of cheap and abundant elements that are stable in water for a reasonable long time. The semiconductors investigated in this thesis are p-type copper based oxides. Hydrogen production is measured by the photocurrent of water reduction at the semiconductor surface. In the first chapter a roundup of the basics of photoelectrochemical hydrogen generation is presented. In Chapter 2, ternary oxides presenting the delafossite crystal structure are explored, a class of materials that is expected to be stable in water under reducing conditions and that has never been studied for PEC photocathodes. The main achievements of this thesis are presented in Chapters 3-6. It is shown that CU2O, a semiconductor notoriously unstable in aqueous solutions yet a very efficient light absorber, can be stabilized against photocathodic degradation and thus used for water reduction. A preliminary optimization study is carried out to understand the synthetic parameters that control the photoactivity of cuprous oxide obtained by electrodeposition. The deposition current density, temperature and bath pH are changed to find the conditions where photoactivity is optimized. They most photoactive films are then characterized in terms of their optical and electrical properties, which are relevant to the photon-to-electron conversion efficiency (Chapter 3). The surface protection technique consists in the growth of ultrathin oxide layers (about 10-20 nm) by atomic layer deposition (ALD) on the CU2O electrodes (Chapter 4). This powerful technique enables a uniform and continuous coverage of a substrate and a control of the thickness at the atomic scale. Therefore, the passivation technique developed in this thesis can be applied to CU2O morphologies much more complex than those employed in this study and most probably to other semiconductors as well. Photocurrents up to 7.6 mA cm-2 are achieved using CU2O electrodes protected with amorphous Al-doped ZnO and TiCh. and decorated with a Pt catalyst. This photocurrent equals half of the maximum photocurrent possible for C112O and is the highest photocurrent ever measured for an oxide-based photoelectrode for PEC water splitting under AM 1.5 illumination. Further