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Polymer Photoelectrodes for Solar Fuel Production: Progress and Challenges.

ABSTRACT: Converting solar energy to fuels has attracted substantial interest over the past decades because it has the potential to sustainably meet the increasing global energy demand. However, achieving this potential requires significant technological advances. Polymer photoelectrodes are composed of earth-abundant elements, e.g. carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, which promise to be more economically sustainable than their inorganic counterparts. Furthermore, the electronic structure of polymer photoelectrodes can be more easily tuned to fit the solar spectrum than inorganic counterparts, promising a feasible practical application. As a fast-moving area, in particular, over the past ten years, we have witnessed an explosion of reports on polymer materials, including photoelectrodes, cocatalysts, device architectures, and fundamental understanding experimentally and theoretically, all of which have been detailed in this review. Furthermore, the prospects of this field are discussed to highlight the future development of polymer photoelectrodes.

SUBMITTER: Thangamuthu M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9284560 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Polymer Photoelectrodes for Solar Fuel Production: Progress and Challenges.

Thangamuthu Madasamy M Ruan Qiushi Q Ohemeng Peter Osei PO Luo Bing B Jing Dengwei D Godin Robert R Tang Junwang J

Chemical reviews 20220614 13

Converting solar energy to fuels has attracted substantial interest over the past decades because it has the potential to sustainably meet the increasing global energy demand. However, achieving this potential requires significant technological advances. Polymer photoelectrodes are composed of earth-abundant elements, e.g. carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, which promise to be more economically sustainable than their inorganic counterparts. Furthermore, the electronic structure of polymer photo ...[more]

PMID: 35699661

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Project description:Most chemical reactions promoted by light and using a photosensitizer (a dye) are subject to the phenomenon of luminescence. Redistribution of light in all directions (isotropic luminescence emission) and in a new spectral range (luminescence emission spectrum) makes experimental and theoretical studies much more complex compared to a situation with a purely absorbing reaction volume. This has a significant impact on the engineering of photoreactors for industrial applications. Future developments associated with photoreactive system optimization are therefore extremely challenging, and require an in-depth description and quantitative analysis of luminescence. In this study, a radiative model describing the effect of luminescence radiation on the calculation of absorptance is presented and analyzed with the multiple inelastic-scattering approach, using Monte Carlo simulations. The formalism of successive orders of scattering expansion is used as a sophisticated analysis tool which provides, when combined with relevant physical approximations, convenient analytical approximate solutions. Its application to four photosensitizers that are representative of renewable hydrogen production via artificial photosynthesis indicates that luminescence has a significant impact on absorptance and on overall quantum yield estimation, with the contribution of multiple scattering and important spectral effects due to inelastic scattering. We show that luminescence cannot be totally neglected in that case, since photon absorption lies at the root of the chemical reaction. We propose two coupled simple and appropriate analytical approximations enabling the estimation of absorptance with a relative error below 6% in every tested situation: the zero-order scattering approximation and the gray single-scattering approximation. Finally, this theoretical approach is used to determine and discuss the overall quantum yield of a bio-inspired photoreactive system with Eosin Y as a photosensitizer, implemented in an experimental setup comprising a photoreactor dedicated to hydrogen production.

Project description:One of the emerging and environmentally friendly technologies is the photoelectrochemical generation of green hydrogen; however, the cheap cost of production and the need for customizing photoelectrode properties are thought to be the main obstacles to the widespread adoption of this technology. The primary players in hydrogen production by photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting, which is becoming more common on a worldwide basis, are solar renewable energy and widely available metal oxide based PEC electrodes. This study attempts to prepare nanoparticulate and nanorod-arrayed films to better understand how nanomorphology can impact structural, optical, and PEC hydrogen production efficiency, as well as electrode stability. Chemical bath deposition (CBD) and spray pyrolysis are used to create ZnO nanostructured photoelectrodes. Various characterization methods are used to investigate morphologies, structures, elemental analysis, and optical characteristics. The crystallite size of the wurtzite hexagonal nanorod arrayed film was 100.8 nm for the (002) orientation, while the crystallite size of nanoparticulate ZnO was 42.1 nm for the favored (101) orientation. The lowest dislocation values for (101) nanoparticulate orientation and (002) nanorod orientation are 5.6 × 10-4 and 1.0 × 10-4 dislocation/nm2, respectively. By changing the surface morphology from nanoparticulate to hexagonal nanorod arrangement, the band gap is decreased to 2.99 eV. Under white and monochromatic light irradiation, the PEC generation of H2 is investigated using the proposed photoelectrodes. The solar-to-hydrogen conversion rate of ZnO nanorod-arrayed electrodes was 3.72% and 3.12%, respectively, under 390 and 405 nm monochromatic light, which is higher than previously reported values for other ZnO nanostructures. The output H2 generation rates for white light and 390 nm monochromatic illuminations were 28.43 and 26.11 mmol.h-1cm-2, respectively. The nanorod-arrayed photoelectrode retains 96.6% of its original photocurrent after 10 reusability cycles, compared to 87.4% for the nanoparticulate ZnO photoelectrode. The computation of conversion efficiencies, H2 output rates, Tafel slope, and corrosion current, as well as the application of low-cost design methods for the photoelectrodes, show how the nanorod-arrayed morphology offers low-cost, high-quality PEC performance and durability.

Dataset Information

Polymer Photoelectrodes for Solar Fuel Production: Progress and Challenges.

Publications

Polymer Photoelectrodes for Solar Fuel Production: Progress and Challenges.

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