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      https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/boms/045/0055

    • Keywords

       

      AACVD; FTO-AZO; water splitting; linear sweep voltammetry.

    • Abstract

       

      Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is an emerging way for the production of H$_2$, which has the ability to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels for the power generation and provide an ecologically safe storage of solarenergy. Fabrication of photoelectrode is one of the major challenges to make PEC water splitting more effective and efficiently sustainable. In this article, we have focussed on the studies of antimony (Sb)-incorporated ZnO photoelectrodes and their evident effects in boosting the PEC water splitting activities using different concentrations of Sb incorporated on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) via aerosol-assisted chemical vapour deposition method (AACVD). The as-deposited photoelectrodes were characterized by using different techniques and were applied for the water splitting. The incorporated thin films exhibited better light absorbance in the visible range, probably because of the generation of extra energy levels through metal incorporation. An enhanced PEC water splitting performance was observed by Sb-incorporated ZnO photoelectrodes as compared to pure ZnO. More specifically, 15% Sb-incorporated ZnO attained a photocurrent density of 0.99 mA cm$^{-2}$ at 0.85 V vs. Ag/AgCl and maximum photo-stability that is quite greater as compared to pure ZnO (0.19 mA cm$^{-2}$). This improvement was stated by the reduced bandgap and multifaceted morphological aspects of Sb incorporated ZnO. In the production of simple and low-cost synthetic methods and effective electrode materials for PEC water splitting applications, these results are proved to be very helpful.

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    • Author Affiliations

       

      HUMAIRA RASHID KHAN1 2 3 MUHAMMAD AAMIR4 BILAL AKRAM5 MOHAMMAD AZAD MALIK2 ASIF ALI TAHIR3 MUHAMMAD AZIZ CHOUDRY4 JAVEED AKHTAR4

      1. Rawalpindi Women University, Satellite Town, Rawalpindi, Punjab 46300, Pakistan
      2. School of Materials, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
      3. Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI), University of Exeter Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK
      4. Functional Nanomaterials Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Mirpur University of Science and Technology (MUST), Mirpur 10250, AJK, Pakistan
      5. Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
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