Influence of the operating temperature on the performance of silicon based photoelectrochemical devices for water splitting. (February 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Urbain, Félix; Becker, Jan-Philipp; Smirnov, Vladimir; Ziegler, Jürgen; Yang, Florent; Kaiser, Bernhard; Jaegermann, Wolfram; Hoch, Sascha; Maljusch, Artjom; Rau, Uwe; Finger, Friedhelm
• Is Part Of: Materials science in semiconductor processing. Volume 42:Part 1(2016:Feb.)
• Page Start: 142
• Page End: 146
• Publication Date: 2016-02
• Subjects: Semiconductors -- Periodicals; Integrated circuits -- Materials -- Periodicals; Semiconducteurs -- Périodiques; Circuits intégrés -- Matériaux -- Périodiques; Electronic journals; 621.38152
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mssp.2015.08.045
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1369-8001

Abstract

Abstract: This paper highlights the effect of the operation temperature on the performance of a photovoltaic-biased electrosynthetic cell (PV-EC) device for solar hydrogen production based on a triple junction thin film silicon solar cell. The influence of the temperature in the range from 25 °C to 60 °C was studied individually for all components of the device: the solar cell, the hydrogen evolving cathode, the oxygen evolving anode, and the electrolyte. Based on the experimental data, the overall temperature-dependent current–voltage characteristics of the complete PV-EC device was modeled by merging the current–voltage characteristics of the individual components in an empirical series circuit model. We found that a decrease in the photovoltage of the solar cells with increasing temperature can be compensated by an improved electrochemical kinetics with temperature. This lead to a slight improvement in the performance of the integrated PV-EC device. Under an assumption of 100% faradaic efficiency, a maximum solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 9.5% was found in 1 M KOH at an operation temperature of 50 °C.