Photo-electrochemistry

A promising and environmental-friendly way of producing renewable energy is photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting, where the sun light and semiconducting materials are used to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. The traditional material for this purpose is TiO2 but its large bandgap (~3.0 eV) poses a severe limitation in terms of efficient utilization of the solar spectrum. As an alternative to TiO2, we are working on developing Cu(In,Ga)Se2 photocathodes for hydrogen evolution and BiVO4 photoanodes for oxygen evolution; by connecting them in tandem configuration, we aim to build PEC cells for unassisted (i.e. no applied bias) photocatalytic water splitting.