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Localized dielectric breakdown and antireflection coating in metal–oxide–semiconductor photoelectrodes

Nature Materials volume 16, pages 127–131 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Silicon-based photoelectrodes for solar fuel production have attracted great interest over the past decade, with the major challenge being silicon’s vulnerability to corrosion. A metal–insulator–semiconductor architecture, in which an insulator film serves as a protection layer, can prevent corrosion but must also allow low-resistance carrier transport, generally leading to a trade-off between stability and efficiency. In this work, we propose and demonstrate a general method to decouple the two roles of the insulator by employing localized dielectric breakdown. This approach allows the insulator to be thick, which enhances stability, while enabling low-resistance carrier transport as required for efficiency. This method can be applied to various oxides, such as SiO2 and Al2O3. In addition, it is suitable for silicon, III–V compounds, and other optical absorbers for both photocathodes and photoanodes. Finally, the thick metal-oxide layer can serve as a thin-film antireflection coating, which increases light absorption efficiency.

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Figure 1: Metal–insulator–semiconductor photoelectrodes.
Figure 2: Electrical and photoelectrochemical characterization.
Figure 3: Antireflection coating and PEC performance.
Figure 4: Ni81Fe19 catalytic performance.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (grant DMR-1311866), and the Stanford Global Climate and Energy Project. This work was performed in part at the University of Texas Microelectronics Research Center, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), which is supported by the National Science Foundation (grant ECCS-1542159).

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Author notes

  1. Li Ji and Hsien-Yi Hsu: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Microelectronics Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA

    Li Ji, Xiaohan Li, Kai Huang, Ye Zhang, Jack C. Lee & Edward T. Yu

  2. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Center for Electrochemistry, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA

    Li Ji, Hsien-Yi Hsu & Allen J. Bard

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  1. Li Ji
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Contributions

L.J. and E.T.Y. contributed to the design concept. L.J., H.-Y.H., X.L., K.H. and Y.Z. performed the fabrication process and measurements. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Li Ji.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Ji, L., Hsu, HY., Li, X. et al. Localized dielectric breakdown and antireflection coating in metal–oxide–semiconductor photoelectrodes. Nature Mater 16, 127–131 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4801

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