A brief perspective on the fabrication of hierarchical nanostructure for solar water splitting photoelectrochemical cells

Abstract

Among various solar energy generation methods, a water splitting photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell have been anticipated as a one of the promising source to generate hydrogen by natural sunlight. Owing to unique electrical, electrochemical and optical properties, the nanostructured metal oxides were intensively investigated to adopt as a main material in the water splitting PEC cell. However, most of nanostructured metal oxides have an improper bandgap size/position for splitting water molecule, it needs to be engineered to shift a level of the energy bandgap. In this prospective review, we will briefly discuss solution-processed fabrication methods for water splitting applications.