Development of chalcogenide thin film materials for photoelectrochemical hydrogen production

In the present communication, we report our efforts to integrate chalcogenide-based photoelectrochemical (PEC) materials into a standalone device capable of water-splitting using sunlight as the only source of energy. More specifically, the PEC performances of copper gallium diselenide are presented. First, a brief introduction to the material microstructural characteristics is presented. Then, the PEC properties are discussed, including incident-photonto-current efficiency (>60% in the visible), Faradaic efficiency (uncatalyzed, 86%) and durability (400 hours). Finally, we report the solar-to-hydrogen benchmark efficiency (3.7%) of a device made of a CuGaSe2 photocathode and a-Si solar cells measured in a 2-electrode configuration using a RuO2 counter electrode.