title: Photoelectrochemical properties of SrNbO2N photoanodes for water oxidation fabricated by the particle transfer method.
abstract: SrNbO(2)N photoanodes, which have a band gap energy of 1.8 eV, were tested for photoelectrochemical water oxidation in water splitting. The photoanodes were fabricated either by a particle transfer method or an electrophoretic deposition method. The effects of the precursors, fabrication method, and CoOx catalyst loading were studied in order to identify the shortcomings of the photoanodes and improve their photoelectrochemical properties for water oxidation. SrNbO(2)N photoanodes fabricated by particle transfer generated a photocurrent that was one order of magnitude higher than that of photoanodes prepared via electrophoretic deposition. The stoichiometric oxide precursor (Sr(2)Nb(2)O(7)) was found to be preferable to the Sr-rich oxide precursor (Sr(5)Nb(4)O(15)). CoOx increased the photoanodic current on SrNbO(2)N photoelectrodes. Nevertheless, the incident photon-to-current efficiency was still limited to 10% at most. Potential problems with SrNbO(2)N photoanodes were discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical System Engineering, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan. domen@chemsys.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Haruki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Urabe
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hisatomi
authors.forename: Tsutomu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Minegishi
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kubota
authors.forename: Kazunari
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Domen