title: Design Guidelines for High-Performance Particle-Based Photoanodes for Water Splitting: Lanthanum Titanium Oxynitride as a Model.
abstract: Semiconductor powders are perfectly suited for the scalable fabrication of particle-based photoelectrodes, which can be used to split water using the sun as a renewable energy source. This systematic study is focused on variation of the electrode design using LaTiO2 N as a model system. We present the influence of particle morphology on charge separation and transport properties combined with post-treatment procedures, such as necking and size-dependent co-catalyst loading. Five rules are proposed to guide the design of high-performance particle-based photoanodes by adding or varying several process steps. We also specify how much efficiency improvement can be achieved using each of the steps. For example, implementation of a connectivity network and surface area enhancement leads to thirty times improvement in efficiency and co-catalyst loading achieves an improvement in efficiency by a factor of seven. Some of these guidelines can be adapted to non-particle-based photoelectrodes.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory Materials for Energy Conversion, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, Dübendorf, Switzerland. steve.landsmann@empa.ch.
authors.forename: Steve
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Landsmann
authors.affiliation: Institute of Non-Metallic Materials, Clausthal University of Technology, Zehntnerstrasse 2a, 38678, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany.
authors.forename: Alexandra E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Maegli
authors.affiliation: Laboratory Materials for Energy Conversion, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, Dübendorf, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Trottmann
authors.affiliation: Laboratory Materials for Energy Conversion, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, Dübendorf, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Corsin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Battaglia
authors.affiliation: Institute for Material Science, University of Stuttgart, Heisenbergstraße 3, 70569, Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: Anke
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Weidenkaff
authors.affiliation: Laboratory Materials for Energy Conversion, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, Dübendorf, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pokrant
mesh_terms: D002384:Catalysis; D004566:Electrodes; D007811:Lanthanum / Q000737:chemistry*; D012993:Solar Energy; D014025:Titanium / Q000737:chemistry*; D014867:Water / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D014867:Water; D007811:Lanthanum; D014025:Titanium
keywords: onset potential; photocurrent; photoelectrodes; semiconductors; water splitting