Widespread deployment of solar fuel generators requires the development of efficient and scalable functional materials, especially for photoelectrocatalysis of the oxygen evolution reaction. Metal oxides comprise the most promising class of photoanode materials, but no known material meets the demanding photoelectrochemical requirements. Copper vanadates have recently been identified as a promising class of photoanode materials with several phases exhibiting an indirect band gap near 2 eV and stable photoelectrocatalysis of the oxygen evolution reaction in a pH 9.2 electrolyte. By employing combinatorial inkjet printing of metal precursors and applying both calcination and rapid thermal processing, we characterize the phase behaviour of the entire CuO-V2O5 composition space for different thermal treatments via automated analysis of approximately 100 000 Raman spectra acquired using a novel Raman imaging technique. These results enable the establishment of structure-property relationships for optical absorption and photoelectrochemical properties, revealing that highly active photoelectrocatalysts containing alpha-Cu2V2O7 or alpha-CuV2O6 can be prepared using scalable solution processing techniques. An additional discovery results from the formation of an off-stoichiometric beta-Cu2V2O7 material that exhibits high photoelectroactivity in the presence of a ferri/ferrocyanide redox couple with excellent stability in a pH 13 electrolyte, demonstrating that copper vanadates may be viable photoanodes in strong alkaline electrolytes.

Solar fuels photoanodes prepared by inkjet printing of copper vanadates

253rd National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.