Artificial photosynthesis, utilizing sunlight to split water, may be an effective technique to store solar energy. Silicon is considered a promising material to split water because of its low cost and wide use in the photovoltaic industry. However, the application performance is limited due to its small band gap and inherent corrosion in a neutral or alkaline environment. Recently, tripe-junction amorphous silicon (3-jn-a-Si) has been investigated to solve such problems. In this research, with proper catalysts, the 3-jn-a-Si based water-splitting solar cells were fabricated and studied.

In this thesis, physical methods were applied to explore their morphologies, element compositions, phase structures, surface properties and light absorption abilities. Electrochemical methods we...[ Read more ]

Artificial photosynthesis, utilizing sunlight to split water, may be an effective technique to store solar energy. Silicon is considered a promising material to split water because of its low cost and wide use in the photovoltaic industry. However, the application performance is limited due to its small band gap and inherent corrosion in a neutral or alkaline environment. Recently, tripe-junction amorphous silicon (3-jn-a-Si) has been investigated to solve such problems. In this research, with proper catalysts, the 3-jn-a-Si based water-splitting solar cells were fabricated and studied.

In this thesis, physical methods were applied to explore their morphologies, element compositions, phase structures, surface properties and light absorption abilities. Electrochemical methods were used to measure their photoelectrochemical properties. In addition, catalysts synthesized in different conditions were compared.

The cells showed the highest efficiency of 4.9% and operating time more than 10 hours in the alkaline environment. Moreover, after comparing the cells synthesized in different conditions, a conclusion can be drawn that the valency value of cobalt in the catalyst and the thickness of the catalyst had a joint effect on the performance of the cells. Cells with cobalt phosphate catalyst synthesized in room temperature by applying voltage of 1.3 V versus Ag/AgCl exhibited the best electrochemical performance.