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Water Splitting by Nanocrystalline TiO2 in a Complete Photoelectrochemical Cell Exhibits Efficiencies Limited by Charge Recombination
Version 2 2016-06-30, 14:36
Version 1 2016-02-25, 04:25
journal contribution
posted on 2010-03-11, 00:00 authored by Alexander
J. Cowan, Junwang Tang, Wenhua Leng, James R. Durrant, David R. KlugWe report on the mechanism of water splitting by TiO2 in the absence of chemical scavengers in a fully functional photoelectrochemical
(PEC) cell. The application of a positive potential to a nanocrystalline-TiO2 film is shown to lead to the formation of long-lived holes
which oxidize water on the milliseconds time scale. These first time-resolved
studies of a nanocrystalline-TiO2 (nc-TiO2)
film in a complete PEC cell also showed that all of the long-lived
photoholes go on to generate O2, and that there are no
major branching inefficiencies in the catalysis itself, which appears
to be operating at efficiencies close to 100%. The overall quantum
yield of oxygen production under pulsed illumination (355 nm) was
found to be ∼8% at excitation densities of 4.4 photons per
particle. Under all conditions examined, electron−hole recombination
was found to be the dominant loss pathway.