title: ZnO nanorod arrays for photoelectrochemical cells.
abstract: The splitting of water using photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells to produce hydrogen is one of the most sustainable forms of energy production and more and more 1-D nanostructrues semiconductors used as photoelectrodes have been studied extensively. However, it is not clear whether the photoconversion efficiencies of such nanostructure devices are limited by the architectures of the 1-D electrodes. Here, we explore the effect of the architecture like the length and width of ZnO nanorods on the PEC cells performance for the first time. The as-prepared nanorods have diameters of 40-50 nm and lengths of 400-800 nm. Preliminary measurements exhibit that the resulting electrodes have promising PEC properties. Mott-Schottky measurements give a flat-band potential of +0.10 V, a carrier density of 3.7 x 10(17) cm(-3), and a space-charge layer of 26 nm. The photocurrent of 800 nm-long nanorods shows 10 times higher than that of 400 nm-long ones, and an encouraging maximum photoconversion efficiency of 0.25% is obtained under illumination of 100 mW/cm2 (AM 1.5), which is among the highest reported for an undoped ZnO photoelectrode to date.
authors.affiliation: Research Center of Materials Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Chuanbao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cao