Research on the Influence of the Interfacial Properties Between a Cu3BiS3 Film and an InxCd1−xS Buffer Layer for Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting

Abstract

Abstract The ternary compound photovoltaic semiconductor Cu3BiS3 thin film‐based photoelectrode demonstrates a quite promising potential for photoelectrochemical hydrogen evolution. The presented high onset potential of 0.9 VRHE attracts much attention and shows that the Cu3BiS3 thin films are quite good as an efficient solar water splitting photoelectrode. However, the CdS buffer does not fit the Cu3BiS3 thin film: the conduction band offset between CdS and Cu3BiS3 reaches 0.7 eV, and such a high conduction band offset (CBO) significantly increases the interfacial recombination ratio and is the main reason for the relatively low photocurrent of the Cu3BiS3/CdS photoelectrode. In this study, the InxCd1−xS buffer layer is found to be significantly lowered the CBO of CBS/buffer and that the In incorporation ratio of the buffer influences the CBO value of the CBS/buffer. The Pt‐TiO2/In0.6Cd0.4S/Cu3BiS3 photocathode exhibits an appreciable photocurrent density of ≈12.20 mA cm−2 at 0 VRHE with onset potential of more than 0.9 VRHE, and the ABPE of the Cu3BiS3‐based photocathode reaches the highest value of 3.13%. By application of the In0.6Cd0.4S buffer, the Cu3BiS3‐BiVO4 tandem cell presents a stable and excellent unbiased STH of 2.57% for over 100 h.

Keywords

• band alignment
• Cu3BiS3 compound semiconductors
• photovoltaic thin film
• solar water splitting