• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.151-156
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• 2007

Solar cell and nanofiltration membrane were utilized in a system of enzymatic hydrogen production through light-sensitized photoanode, which resembles photoelectrochemical(PEC) configuration. Solar cell uses no additional light energy to increase energy for electrons to reduce protons and for holes to oxidize water to oxygen, and nanofiltration membrane replaces a salt bridge successfully with increased ion transport capability. With this system configuration, optimized amount of enzyme(10.98 unit), and an anodized tubular $TiO_2$ electrode($5^{\circ}C$/1 hr in 0.5 wt% HF-$650^{\circ}C$/5 hr) hydrogen evolved at a rate of ca. $43\;{\mu}mol/(cm^2{\times}hr)$ in a cathodic compartment and oxygen generated at a rate of ca. $20\;{\mu}mol/(cm^2{\times}hr)$ in an anodic compartment. The stoichiometric evolution of gases indicated that water was splitted in the system.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.40-45
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• 2007

Methylene blue(MB) was photocatalytically degraded with one-body photoanode and solar simulator to investigate the possible application to both environmental purification and photoelectrochemical cell for hydrogen production. Photoactive titanium dioxide was formed on both sides of Ti plate following steps such as rinsing-annealing-calcination or anodizing(20 V, 30 V)-annealing($350^{\circ}C$, $450^{\circ}C)$ after etching. The prepared titania plate($2cm{\times}2\;cm$, ca 1.6 mg $TiO_2$ on the basis of $1\;{\mu}m$ thickness) was used to degrade MB(10 ppm in 200 mL solution). The reaction tended to follow the Langmuir-Hinshelwood kinetics with zero order. Comparative experiments with Degussa P25 showed the same zero order kinetics when 2 mg of P25 had been used, while the first order kinetics when 200 mg used. This concludes the feasibility of the prepared titania plate as a material for the purification of low-level harmful organics and an electrode or a membrane for photoelectrochemical system for hydrogen production.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.377-389
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• 2022

The current global energy supply depends heavily on fossil fuels. This makes technology such as direct water splitting from harvesting solar energy in photoelectrochemical (PEC) systems potentially attractive due to its a promising route for environmentally benign hydrogen production. In this study, undoped and nickel-doped molybdenum oxide photoanodes (called photoanodes S₁ and S₂ respectively) were synthesized through electrodeposition by applying -1.377 V vs Ag/AgCl (3 M KCl) for 3 hours on an FTO-coated glass substrate immersed in molibdatecitrate aqueous solutions at pH 9. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used for microstructural and compositional characterizations of the photoanodes. In addition, the optical and photoelectrochemical characterizations of these photoanodes were performed by UV-Visible spectroscopy, and linear scanning voltammetry (LSV) respectively. The results showed that all the photoanodes produced exhibit conductivity and catalytic properties that make them attractive for water splitting application in a photoelectrochemical cell. In this context, the photoanode S₂ exhibited better photocatalytic activity than the photoanode S₁. In addition, photoanode S₂ had the lowest optical band-gap energy value (2.58 eV), which would allow better utilization of the solar spectrum.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.244-249
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• 2007

The present work considers the concept of enzymatic photoelectrochemical generation of hydrogen through water splitting using a Xe lamp as a source of light. A solar cell was applied to the system in order to shift the level of electrochemical energy of the system, resulting in the rate of hydrogen production at $43\;{\mu}mol/(cm^2{\times}hr)$ in cathodic compartment with an anodized tubular $TiO_2$ electrode(ATTE, $5^{\circ}C$/1hr in 0.5 wt% HF-$650^{\circ}C$/5hr). The trend of the rate of hydrogen production, for the ATTEs with different annealing temperature from $350^{\circ}C$ to $850^{\circ}C$, fairly well coincided with the photoelectrical properties measured by potentiostat. The actual chemical bias through imposition of two electrolytes of different pHs between anode(13.68) and cathode(7.5) was 0.24eV.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.452-457
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• 2007

Titanium foil and mesh(anodized tubular $TiO_2$ electrode, ATTE) were anodized in a bath at $5^{\circ}C$ with 20V external bias applied, then annealed at different temperatures($450^{\circ}C{\sim}850^{\circ}C$) to obtain tubular $TiO_2$ on the Ti substrate. The prepared sample was used to investigate rate of hydrogen production as well as Cr(VI) reduction. The ATTEs annealed at relatively lower temperatures showed higher activity than those at relatively higher temperatures. In particular, the Cr(VI) reduction was pH-dependent. To improve photocatalytic Cr(VI) reduction with the ATTEs, two configurations, fixing foil type and rotating mesh type, were also compared. As a result, the rotating mesh type was much more effective for Cr(VI) reaction than the former due to the more efficient use of the light. In the rotating type reactor, as the rotating speed increased, the rate of the Cr(VI) reduction was getting faster.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.227.2-227.2
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• 2010

본 연구에서는 양극산화된 $TiO_2$ 전극(anodized tubular $TiO_2$ electrode, ATTE)을 수소제조용 PEC(Photoelectrochemical)시스템에서 광어노드와 기존의 백금전극을 대체하고 $H^+$ 환원능을 향상시키기 위하여 엔자임(Pyrococcus furiosus, Pfu)을 고정화한 후 캐소드로 동시에 활용하였으며, 엔자임 고정을 위한 crosslinker 종류 및 금속담지 여부, ATTE 길이를 통한 수소발생양에 미치는 영향을 연구하였다. ATTE 표면과 엔자임의 amine group의 연결을 위하여 heterobifunctional crosslinker로써 사슬 길이가 상대적으로 짧은 Sulfo-SDA가 유리하였으며, 금속담지의 경우 짧은 튜브의 경우 1% 내에서 효과가 증진되었으나 긴 튜브의 경우는 오히려 광전류 및 궁극적으로 수소발생속도에 불리하게 작용하였다. 또한, 튜브 길이가 긴 ATTE가 짧은 ATTE 보다 수소발생양에서 더욱 효율적임을 알 수 있었다. 텅스텐산화물 담지의 가시광감응에의 담지 효과는 예비 실험 결과로 나타나지 않아, 추가적인 연구가 필요한 것으로 판단된다.

• Rapid Communication in Photoscience
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.35-37
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• 2014

PEC (photoelectrochemical) water splitting for $O_2/H_2$ production is one of the promising but difficult way to utilize solar energy. Among photocatalytic materials for PEC water oxidation, $BiVO_4$ (Eg = 2.4 eV) has been recently intensively studied since it has various advantageous properties. But its maximum efficiency has not been realized owing to kinetic factors - slow water oxidation at surface & insufficient stability. These problems can be simultaneously solved by application of oxygen evolution catalyst (OEC) such as $CoO_x$, Co-Pi, $IrO_x$ etc. Herein we report the first successful application of $NiFeO_x$ OEC on $BiVO_4$, showing good performance compared to other effective OEC applied on $BiVO_4$ under basic conditions. The enhanced activity of OEC loaded $BiVO_4$ has been supported by the surface charge separation efficiency and electrochemical impedance studies.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.99.2-99.2
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• 2011

Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) supported on glass are widely used as substrates in PEC studies for photovoltaic hydrogen generation applications However, high sheet resistane ($10{\sim}15{\Omega}/cm^2$) and fragileness of glass-supported TCO substrates are the obstacles to produce the large area PEC cells. Such internal sheet resistance is detrimental to efficient collection of photogenerated majority charge carriers at the photoactive material and electrolyte interface. Moreover, these TCO substrates are very expensive and consume about 40~60% cost of the devices. Hence, a low sheet resistance of the substrate is a key point in improving the performance of PEC devices. Metallic substrates coated with a photoactive material would be a good choice for efficient charge collection. Such metal substrates based photanodes are best candidate for large-scale phtoelectrochemical water splitting for hydrogen generation. In this study, we report the enhanced PEC performance of $WO_3$ film on metal(chemical etched, bare) substrate. It is proposed that interface between $WO_3$ and the metal substrate is responsible for efficient charge transfer and demonstrated significant improvement in the photoelectrochmical performance. X-ray diffration and FESEM suduies reveled that $WO_3$ films are monoclinic, porous, polycrystalline with average grain size of ~50nm. Photocurrent of $WO_3$ prepared on metal substrates was measured in 0.5M $H_2SO_4$ electroyte under simulated $100mW/cm^2$ illumination.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.417-417
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• 2016

Global environmental deterioration has become more serious year by year and thus scientific interests in the renewable energy as environmental technology and replacement of fossil fuels have grown exponentially. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell consisting of semiconductor photoelectrodes that can harvest light and use this energy directly to split water, also known as photoelectrolysis or solar water splitting, is a promising renewable energy technology to produce hydrogen for uses in the future hydrogen economy. A major advantage of PEC systems is that they involve relatively simple processes steps as compared to many other H2 production systems. Until now, a number of materials including TiO2, WO3, Fe2O3, and BiVO4 were exploited as the photoelectrode. However, the PEC performance of these single absorber materials is limited due to their large charge recombinations in bulk, interface and surface, leading low charge separation/transport efficiencies. Recently, coupling of two materials, e.g., BiVO4/WO3, Fe2O3/WO3 and CuWO4/WO3, to form a type II heterojunction has been demonstrated to be a viable means to improve the PEC performance by enhancing the charge separation and transport efficiencies. In this study, we have prepared a triple-layer heterojunction BiVO4/WO3/SnO2 photoelectrode that shows a comparable PEC performance with previously reported best-performing nanostructured BiVO4/WO3 heterojunction photoelectrode via a facile solution method. Interestingly, we found that the incorporation of SnO2 nanoparticles layer in between WO3 and FTO largely promotes electron transport and thus minimizes interfacial recombination. The impact of the SnO2 interfacial layer was investigated in detail by TEM, hall measurement and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) techniques. In addition, our planar-structured triple-layer photoelectrode shows a relatively high transmittance due to its low thickness (~300 nm), which benefits to couple with a solar cell to form a tandem PEC device. The overall PEC performance, especially the photocurrent onset potential (Vonset), were further improved by a reactive-ion etching (RIE) surface etching and electrocatalyst (CoOx) deposition.