Nassereddine Y, Benyoussef M, Rajput NS, Saitzek S, El Marssi M, Jouiad M. Strong Intermixing Effects of LFO
1-x/STO
x toward the Development of Efficient Photoanodes for Photoelectrocatalytic Applications.
Nanomaterials (Basel) 2023;
13:2863. [PMID:
37947708 PMCID:
PMC10649736 DOI:
10.3390/nano13212863]
[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] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2023] [Revised: 10/26/2023] [Accepted: 10/28/2023] [Indexed: 11/12/2023]
Abstract
Aiming to improve the photocatalytic properties of transition metal perovskites to be used as robust photoanodes, [LaFeO3]1-x/[SrTiO3]x nanocomposites (LFO1-x/STOx) are considered. This hybrid structure combines good semiconducting properties and an interesting intrinsic remanent polarization. All the studied samples were fabricated using a solid-state method followed by high-energy ball milling, and they were subsequently deposited by spray coating. The synthesized compounds were demonstrated to possess orthorhombic (Pnma) and cubic (Pm3¯m) structures for LFO and STO, respectively, with an average grain size of 55-70 nm. The LFO1-x/STOx nanocomposites appeared to exhibit high visible light absorption, corresponding to band gaps of 2.17-3.21 eV. Our findings show that LFO0.5/STO0.5 is the optimized heterostructure; it achieved a high photocurrent density of 11 μA/cm2 at 1.23 V bias vs. RHE and an applied bias photo-to-current efficiency of 4.1 × 10-3% at 0.76 V vs. RHE, as demonstrated by the photoelectrochemical measurements. These results underline the role of the two phases intermixing LFO and STO at the appropriate content to yield a high-performing photoanode ascribed to efficient charge separation and transfer. This suggests that LFO0.5/STO0.5 could be a potential candidate for the development of efficient photoanodes for hydrogen generation via photoelectrocatalytic water splitting.
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