Operand observation of excited carrier transfers in photoelectrodes for water splitting by electrochemical XAFS

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Solar hydrogen production from water using photoelectrochemical cells is an attractive candidate for the renewable energy supply. Many semiconductor photoelectrodes for overall water splitting have already been established after the discovery of the Honda-Fujishima effect. Recently, metal oxides such as manganese oxide or cobalt phosphate have been demonstrated to substantially improve the photoelectrochemical efficiency for water splitting, because the metal oxides on the semiconductors can function as oxygen evolution cocatalyst. Therefore, we applied the in-situ Mn K-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy technique for the observation of photoexcited carrier transfer from Nb:SrTiO3 photoelectrode to metal oxide cocatalysts during photoelectrochemical reaction.