Defect engineered (Er3+/Nd3+) codoped TiO2 photoanodes for enhanced photoelectrochemical and photovoltaic applications

Katta, Venkata Seshaiah and Velpandian, Muthuraja and Subrahmanyam, Challapalli and Meduri, Praveen and Raavi, Sai Santosh Kumar (2022) Defect engineered (Er3+/Nd3+) codoped TiO2 photoanodes for enhanced photoelectrochemical and photovoltaic applications. Sustainable Energy & Fuels. pp. 1-18. ISSN 2398-4902

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Abstract

Herein, we describe an efficient way to engineer the electronic energy defects and achieve the defect passivation of codoping of two rare-earth (RE) ions, namely, neodymium (Nd3+) and erbium (Er3+), into the TiO2 lattice. It is shown that the PEC performance is significantly improved using the RE-coated TiO2 photoanode. X-Ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Raman study have confirmed the doping concentration's upper limit without modifying the single-phase structure of the TiO2 lattice. The Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) study established the optimal codoping composition of "Er0.003Nd0.001Ti0.996O2" with enriched surface properties. Photoluminescence (PL) investigations indicated defect passivation, which enabled a favourable energy landscape via intermediate trap-sites, improving charge transport characteristics. The photoelectrochemical (PEC) device with the optimized codoped TiO2 photoanode has a higher increased photocurrent density (J(ph)) of 16 mu A cm(-2) in comparison to the device with pristine TiO2 (J(ph): 7 mu A cm(-2)). As a proof of concept, a simple sensitization of these engineered TiO2 photoanodes with the cadmium sulfide (CdS) quantum dots resulted in a J(ph) of 2.8 mA cm(-2), and with N719 ruthenium dye, a J(ph) of 0.8 mA cm(-2) was obtained, indicating the improved performance of sensitized codoped TiO2 photoanodes for PEC devices. As a proof of concept, N719 dye-based dye-sensitized solar cells with doped TiO2 photoanodes demonstrated an enhanced power conversion efficiency.

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IITH Creators:

IITH Creators	ORCiD
Subrahmanyam, Challapalli	UNSPECIFIED
Raavi, Sai Santosh Kumar	http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2496-9233

Item Type:

Article

Additional Information:

RSSK acknowledges the financial support for the following projects no BRICS/PilotCall2/IEEE-OSC/2018 (G) and CRG/2019/003197. KVS acknowledges the financial support from CSIR-SRF(09/1001(0031)/2018-EMR-I).

Uncontrolled Keywords:

ANATASE,ARRAYS,METAL

Subjects:

Physics
Chemistry

Divisions:

Department of Chemistry
Department of Physics

Depositing User:

. LibTrainee 2021

Date Deposited:

22 Nov 2022 07:20

Last Modified:

22 Nov 2022 07:20