Title | Halide Perovskite and Organic Semiconductor Photoelectrodes for Solar Water Splitting
Date | Monday, October 7, 2024, at 9:30 a.m. (UTC +2)
Speaker | Dr Matyas DABOCZI, HUN-REN Centre for Energy Research, Hungary
Abstract | Perovskite and organic photoactive materials due to their excellent optoelectronic properties have great potential to be used in photoelectrochemical devices for green hydrogen generation via solar water splitting. These two types of materials have attracted great scientific interest by reaching record high single-junction solar cell efficiencies, but their photoelectrode performance is currently limited by their instability in an aqueous environment.
I will present a cost-effective way of protecting halide perovskite and organic photoactive layers used to reach both stable and remarkably high, water oxidation photocurrents. The perovskite photoelectrodes incorporate solely Earth-abundant materials with tuned energy level CsPbBr3 photoactive layer and achieve 8.1 mA cm-2 photocurrent density at +1.23 VRHE (close to the radiative efficiency limit of CsPbBr3) with record perovskite photoanode stability: 100% of stabilized photocurrent density maintained for more than 100 h.1 I will demonstrate how this stability can be further improved, projected to be of months, by applying chemically and mechanically stable glassy carbon and boron-doped diamond sheets.2
Organic photoanodes containing polymer:non-fullerene acceptor absorber layer (PM6:D18:L8-BO) achieve breakthrough photocurrent densities over 25 mA cm‑2 at +1.23 VRHE and remarkable, days-long operational stability. I will also show monolithic organic tandem photoanodes with exceptionally low, negative onset potential and bias-free water splitting in two-electrode setup with solar-to-hydrogen efficiency reaching up to 5%.3
References:
- Daboczi, M. et al. Scalable All-Inorganic Halide Perovskite Photoanodes with >100 h Operational Stability Containing Earth-Abundant Materials. Advanced Materials 2304350 (2023) doi:10.1002/ADMA.202304350.
- Zhu, Z., Daboczi, M., Xuan, Y., Liu, X. & Eslava, S. Ultrastable halide perovskite CsPbBr3 photoanodes achieved with electrocatalytic glassy-carbon and boron-doped diamond sheets. Nat Commun (2024) doi:10.26434/CHEMRXIV-2023-BG5WF.
- Daboczi, M. et al. Bulk Heterojunction Organic Photoanodes for Enhanced Water Oxidation and Unassisted Solar Water Splitting. (2024) doi:10.26434/CHEMRXIV-2024-VSHSX.
Matyas DABOCZI is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the HUN-REN Centre for Energy Research working on solution-processable materials for solar energy conversion devices (solar cells, solar hydrogen generation and biomass oxidation). His current research is focused on understanding and tuning the optoelectronic and electrochemical properties of easily processable semiconductor materials (e.g. perovskites, oxides, organic thin layers) applied in photoelectrochemical cells to improve their performance for water splitting and biomass oxidation. Matyas is also a Visiting Researcher at Imperial College London investigating materials for solar energy conversion in the Eslava Group: Applied Energy Materials.
