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  4. Light trapping in hematite-coated transparent particles for solar fuel generation
 
research article

Light trapping in hematite-coated transparent particles for solar fuel generation

Danaei, Davood
•
Saeidi, Raheleh
•
Dabirian, Ali  
2015
Rsc Advances

Hematite (alpha-Fe2O3), due to its abundance and low-cost, is an attractive compound for photoelectrochemical splitting of water to produce hydrogen. However, one major obstacle preventing hematite from achieving the target efficiencies comprises its significantly smaller minority carrier transport distance relative to its optical absorption depth in the visible part of the optical spectrum. Here, we combine host-guest and Mie resonance concepts to achieve significant optical absorption in extremely thin layers of hematite. We propose and theoretically evaluate transparent particles coated with an extremely thin hematite shell as building blocks for hematite photoanodes. By full-field optical simulations we found out that maximal optical absorption is achieved when the particle supports two to three Mie resonance modes above the hematite optical absorption edge. Optical absorption efficiencies integrated over the air mass 1.5 global (AM1.5G) irradiance spectrum, AM1.5, reach more than 2 mA cm(-2) within a 10 nm thick hematite shell of a particle with optimal dimensions and AM1.5 comes close to 5 mA cm(-2) in a 25 nm thick hematite shell. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance when the particles are part of an array or stacked atop each other. The concept introduced here could be useful for improving optical absorption in semiconductors with extremely short carrier transport distances.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1039/c4ra15848b
Web of Science ID

WOS:000348985400032

Author(s)
Danaei, Davood
Saeidi, Raheleh
Dabirian, Ali  
Date Issued

2015

Publisher

Royal Soc Chemistry

Published in
Rsc Advances
Volume

5

Issue

16

Start page

11946

End page

11951

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
IMT  
Available on Infoscience
May 29, 2015
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/114519
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