title: Transparent-conducting-oxide nanowire arrays for efficient photoelectrochemical energy conversion.
abstract: We report one dimensional (1-D) transparent-conducting-oxide arrays coated with light-absorbing semiconductors to simultaneously maximize light harvesting and charge collection in a photoelectrochemical (PEC) system. Tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) nanowire (NW) arrays are prepared on ITO thin-film substrates as the transparent-conducting-oxide, and TiO2 or CdSe/CdS/TiO2 thin layers were coated on the ITO NW arrays as the solar light-absorbing layers. The optimal PEC performance, 0.85% under 100 mW cm(-2) of light illumination, is obtained from ∼ 30 μm-long ITO NW, which is covered with ∼ 20 nm-thick TiO2 nanoshell. We finally demonstrate that the ITO NW-based photoelectrode is also compatible with one of the most efficient visible-light sensitizers, the CdS/CdSe quantum dot. Our approach using the transparent conducting 1-D array has wide potential to improve the PEC performances of conventional semiconducting materials through liberation from the poor charge transport.
authors.affiliation: Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, California 94709, USA. wook2@berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: Sangwook
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Sangbaek
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Gill Sang
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Dong Hoe
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Jun Hong
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Noh
authors.forename: In Sun
authors.initials: IS
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Hyun Suk
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.forename: Kug Sun
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Hong