Fabrication and photoelectrochemical study of selenide and oxide heterostructures for solar hydrogen evolution

Abstract

We report the synthesis and photoelectrochemical (PEC) studies of a novel CdSe/BiVO4 planar heterojunction photoelectrodes for photoelectrochemical water splitting fabricated by chemical bath deposition of CdSe on the spin-coated BiVO4 layers. Temperature and time of chemical bath deposition were investigated to obtain the optimal deposition condition. The optimized CdSe/BiVO4 with enhanced photo absorption yielded a maximum photocurrent density of 2.48 mA under the irradiation of AM 1.5 G (100 mW/cm2) simulated solar light illumination, which is enhanced by 3.87 times compared to bare BiVO4.