A Titanium-Doped SiOx Passivation Layer for Greatly Enhanced Performance of a Hematite-Based Photoelectrochemical System.

This study introduces an in situ fabrication of nanoporous hematite with a Ti-doped SiOx passivation layer for a high-performance water-splitting system. The nanoporous hematite with a Ti-doped SiOx layer (Ti-(SiOx /np-Fe2 O3 )) has a photocurrent density of 2.44 mA cm(-2) at 1.23 VRHE and 3.70 mA cm(-2) at 1.50 VRHE . When a cobalt phosphate co-catalyst was applied to Ti-(SiOx /np-Fe2 O3 ), the photocurrent density reached 3.19 mA cm(-2) at 1.23 VRHE with stability, which shows great potential of the use of the Ti-doped SiOx layer with a synergistic effect of decreased charge recombination, the increased number of active sites, and the reduced hole-diffusion pathway from the hematite to the electrolyte.