Semiconducting Polydopamine for Solar Water Oxidation

Abstract

We report herein the fabrication of organic/inorganic hybrid photoanode for solar water oxidation by using semiconducting polydopamine (SC-PDA). P-type SC-PDA can be readily deposited on various photoanodes by oxidative electropolymerization, resulting in the formation of the organic/inorganic hybrid p-n heterojunction photoanode. The resulting hybrid photoanode exhibited excellent photocatalytic performance for water oxidation due to (1) the increased light absorption by the deposition of SC-PDA with a much higher extinction coefficient than inorganic materials, (2) more efficient charge separation by the formation of a p-n heterojunction, and (3) improved catalytic charge transfer by the catalyst-loading effect. More importantly, our approach was found to be applicable to various inorganic semiconductors, such as TiO2, Fe2O3, and BiVO4. We believe that this study can provide inspiration for the design and fabrication of novel organic/inorganic hybrid devices.