Photothermal Collaborative Water-splitting Using Indium Oxide-based Materials

As an important renewable energy source,solar energy has always been the research hotspot about its efficient utilization of light and heat.In this paper,by comparing the principles and characteristics of light utilization,heat utilization and light-heat utilization,the paper finally determined the photothermal collaborative utilization as the research direction,and proposed a one-step photothermal collaborative system to approach with industrial application.As an n-type semiconductor material with wide band gap and excellent photoresponse performance,indium oxide has a great of applications in photocatalysis and optoelectronic devices,and its photoelectric performance can be greatly optimized through material modification.Therefore,this article is based on indium oxide semiconductor,combining the doping modification of cobalt,copper and nickel.And then experiments were carried on these catalysis to split water.The research showed that Co-doped In₂O₃ has the highest hydrogen production.Ni-doped In₂O₃ produces hydrogen even slightly lower than pure In₂O₃ materials.Then the sample morphology was characterized by XRD and TEM,the optical properties of the sample were characterized by UV and PL,and the reaction process mechanism was characterized by XPS and DRIFT.The reasons for the difference in yield were related to the number of oxygen vacancies.There is an obvious relationship between the oxygen vacancies and the hydrogen production.Metal doping affects the formation of oxygen vacancies by changing the band structure of the In₂O₃ material.At the same time,it also affects the active sites of oxygen vacancies on the surface of the In₂O₃ material,and further affects whether the oxygen vacancies participate in the reaction path.Ultimately It influences the photothermal catalytic activity of In₂O₃ material.Therefore,the selection of metal elements for doping modification on In₂O₃ materials is significant to the photothermal collaborative experiment.