The production of hydrogen and oxygen gas through the splitting of water by a photocatalyst is a potential renewable energy source for the future. However, a cheap and stable photocatalyst has yet to be found. One potential source of such photocatalysts is metal oxides. Some metal oxides such as copper and iron oxide are known photocatalysts, but all single metal oxides and combinations of two mixed metal oxides have been tested and have been found to be unsatisfactory, so the search for a suitable photocatalyst must be expanded to mixtures of three or more metal oxides. To better understand these metal oxide combinations, thin film gradient mixtures of metal oxides and the effect of film thickness must be studied. In order to study these, the construction of a 2D photocurrent scanning station is essential. A scanning station has been constructed using a diode laser, a 2D galvanometer, a potentiostat, an optical chopper, and a lock-in amplifier. A ternary combination of metal oxides with known photocatalytic activity was used to determine the effectiveness of the scanning station. A thin film of this ternary combination of metal oxides was made using constrained evaporation of metal hydroxide colloids followed by heating to decompose the metal hydroxides to metal oxides. The results indicate that the construction of the scanning station was successful. Early results of the effectiveness of the constrained evaporation method will also be reported.

Construction and testing of a 2D photocurrent scanning station for the evaluation of thin film ternary metal oxide water-splitting photocatalysts

255th National Meeting (2018)

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