Abstract
A highly enhanced activity for photoelectrochemical water splitting was achieved by fabricating carbon nanotube (CNT) and Co3O4 decorated hierarchical ZnO nanowire (NW) arrays via a facile stepwise synthesis strategy. The ternary CNT-ZnO-Co3O4 NW composite exhibits an increased photocurrent density (1.9 mA cm-2 at 0.6 V vs. Ag/AgCl, 2.7 times larger than that of the pristine ZnO NWs) and improved incident photon to current conversion efficiency (52.5% at 340 nm, 5.1 times higher than that of the pristine ZnO NWs) as a photoanode under AM 1.5G simulated sunlight. This enhancement is attributed to the specific heterogeneous ternary architecture, which results in promoted electron-hole charge separation and transfer, decreased water oxidation overpotential as well as increased reaction rates of water splitting by decorating ZnO NWs with CNTs and Co3O4.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 13731-13737 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Journal of Materials Chemistry A |
Volume | 3 |
Issue number | 26 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 14 2015 |
Externally published | Yes |