Thiourea-assisted coating of dispersed copper electrocatalysts on Si photocathodes for solar hydrogen production

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Abstract Photoelectrochemical water splitting can convert solar energy into clean hydrogen energy for storage. It is desirable to explore non-precious electrocatalysts for practical applications of a photoelectrode in a large scale. Here, we developed a facile spin-coating and in-situ photoelectrochemical reduction method to prepare a dispersed Cu electrocatalyst on a Si photocathode, which improves the performance remarkably. We find that thiourea in the precursor solution for spin-coating plays an important role in obtaining dispersed Cu particles on the surface of a Si photoelectrode. With thiourea in the precursor, the Cu/Si photocathode shows higher performance than the one without thiourea. Moreover, the Cu/Si photocathode also indicates good stability after 16 h illumination.

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