Visible Light-Driven Water Oxidation on an In Situ N2 -Intercalated WO3 Nanorod Photoanode Synthesized by a Dual-Functional Structure-Directing Agent.

With a view to developing a photoanode for visible light-driven water oxidation in solar water splitting cells, pure-monoclinic WO3 nanorod crystals with N2 intercalated into the lattice were synthesized by using hydrazine with a dual functional role-as an N atom source for the in situ N2 intercalation and as a structure-directing agent for the nanorod architecture-to gain higher incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency at 420 nm than with most previously reported WO3 electrodes.