@misc{CibrevTallaridaDasetal., author = {Cibrev, Dejan and Tallarida, Massimo and Das, Chittaranjan and Lana-Villarreal, Teresa and Schmeißer, Dieter and Gómez, Roberto}, title = {New insights into water photooxidation on reductively pretreated hematite photoanodes}, series = {Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics}, volume = {19}, journal = {Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics}, number = {32}, issn = {1463-9076}, doi = {10.1039/C7CP03958A}, pages = {21807 -- 21817}, abstract = {It has been recently demonstrated that the photoactivity toward oxygen evolution of a number of n-type metal oxides can be substantially improved by a reductive electrochemical pretreatment. Such an enhancement has been primarily linked to the formation of low valent metal species that increase electrode conductivity. In this work, we report new insights into the electrochemical doping using highly ordered (110)-oriented hematite nanorods directly grown on FTO. The reductive pretreatment consists in applying negative potentials for a controlled period of time. Such a pretreatment was optimized in both potentiostatic and potentiodynamic regimes. We show that the optimized pretreatment enhances electrode conductivity due to an increase in charge carrier density. However, it additionally triggers changes in the morphologic, catalytic and electronic properties that facilitate the separation and collection of the photogenerated charge carriers causing an up to 8-fold enhancement in the photocurrent for water oxidation. The reductive pretreatment can be considered as a highly controllable electrochemical n-type doping with the amount of generated Fe2+/polaron species and the change in film morphology as the main factors determining the final efficiency for water photooxidation of the resulting electrodes.}, language = {en} } @misc{TallaridaDasCibrevetal., author = {Tallarida, Massimo and Das, Chittaranjan and Cibrev, Dejan and Kukli, Kaupo and Tamm, Aile and Ritala, Mikko and Lana-Villarreal, Teresa and Gómez, Roberto and Leskel{\"a}, Markku and Schmeißer, Dieter}, title = {Modification of Hematite Electronic Properties with Trimethyl Aluminum to Enhance the Efficiency of Photoelectrodes}, series = {The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters}, volume = {5}, journal = {The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters}, number = {20}, doi = {10.1021/jz501751w}, pages = {3582 -- 3587}, abstract = {The electronic properties of hematite were investigated by means of synchrotron radiation photoemission (SR-PES) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). Hematite samples were exposed to trimethyl aluminum (TMA) pulses, a widely used Al-precursor for the atomic layer deposition (ALD) of Al2O3. SR-PES and XAS showed that the electronic properties of hematite were modified by the interaction with TMA. In particular, the hybridization of O 2p states with Fe 3d and Fe 4s4p changed upon TMA pulses due to electron inclusion as polarons. The change of hybridization correlates with an enhancement of the photocurrent density due to water oxidation for the hematite electrodes. Such an enhancement has been associated with an improvement in charge carrier transport. Our findings open new perspectives for the understanding and utilization of electrode modifications by very thin ALD films and show that the interactions between metal precursors and substrates seem to be important factors in defining their electronic and photoelectrocatalytic properties.}, language = {en} }