Bahnasawy N, Elbanna AM, Ramadan M, Allam NK. Fabrication of polyhedral Cu-Zn oxide nanoparticles by dealloying and anodic oxidation of German silver alloy for photoelectrochemical water splitting.
Sci Rep 2022;
12:16785. [PMID:
36202917 PMCID:
PMC9537281 DOI:
10.1038/s41598-022-21127-1]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/21/2022] [Accepted: 09/21/2022] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
A significant effort has been dedicated to the synthesis of Cu-Zn oxide nanoparticles as a robust photocathode material for photoelectrochemical water splitting. Cu-Zn oxide nanoparticles were formed by controlled anodization of German silver (Cu-Zn-Ni) alloy in an aqueous electrolyte. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) demonstrates the dependence of the obtained nanostructures on the anodization time. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns showed the formation of copper oxide (CuO) and zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles with good stability. This was also confirmed by the compositional X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. The obtained polyhedral nanoparticles showed high optical activity with adequate bandgap energy. These optimized nanoparticles achieved boosted photocurrent of - 0.55 mA/cm2 at - 0.6 V vs. SCE under AM 1.5 illumination, confirming the role of the optimized dealloying and thermal treatment in tuning the photoelectrochemical performance of the material.
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