Corrosion resistant three-dimensional nanotextured silicon for water photo-oxidation. Issue 40 (24th September 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Carter, Rachel; Chatterjee, Shahana; Gordon, Evan; Share, Keith; Erwin, William R.; Cohn, Adam P.; Bardhan, Rizia; Pint, Cary L.
• Is Part Of: Nanoscale. Volume 7:Issue 40(2015)
• Page Start: 16755
• Page End: 16762
• Publication Date: 2015-09-24
• Subjects: Nanoscience -- Periodicals; Nanotechnology -- Periodicals; 620.505
• DOI: 10.1039/c5nr03897a
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2040-3364

Abstract

Abstract : Left panel: Effect of corrosion resistance on surface texturing and carbon passivating on silicon and the correlating effect on corrosion rate; Right panel: Photo of water splitting, oxygen gas formation. Abstract : We demonstrate the ability to chemically transform bulk silicon into a nanotextured surface that exhibits excellent electrochemical stability in aqueous conditions for water photo-oxidation. Conformal defective graphene coatings on nanotextured silicon formed by thermal treatment enable over 50× corrosion resistance in aqueous electrolytes based upon Tafel analysis and impedance spectroscopy. This enables nanotextured silicon as an effective oxygen-evolution photoanode for water splitting with saturation current density measured near 35 mA cm −2 under 100 mW cm −2 (1 sun) illumination. Our approach builds upon simple and scalable processing techniques with silicon to develop corrosion resistant electrodes that can benefit a broad range of catalytic and photocatalytic applications.