Covalent Functionalization of Silicon with Plasma-Grown "Fuzzy" Graphene: Robust Aqueous Photoelectrodes for CO Reduction by Molecular Catalysts.

Carbon electrodes are ideal for electrochemistry with molecular catalysts, exhibiting facile charge transfer and good stability. Yet for solar-driven catalysis with semiconductor light absorbers, stable semiconductor/carbon interfaces can be difficult to achieve, and carbon's high optical extinction means it can only be used in ultrathin layers. Here, we demonstrate a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition process that achieves well-controlled deposition of out-of-plane "fuzzy" graphene (FG) on thermally oxidized Si substrates.

Photoelectrochemical Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer of TiO Thin Films on Silicon.

TiO thin films are often used as protective layers on semiconductors for applications in photovoltaics, molecule-semiconductor hybrid photoelectrodes, and more. Experiments reported here show that TiO thin films on silicon are electrochemically and photoelectrochemically reduced in buffered acetonitrile at potentials relevant to photoelectrocatalysis of CO reduction, N reduction, and H evolution. On both n-type Si and irradiated p-type Si, TiO reduction is proton-coupled with a 1e:1H stoichiometry, as demonstrated by the Nernstian dependence of the Ti on the buffer p.

Multimaterial Self-Aligned Nanopatterning by Simultaneous Adjacent Thin Film Deposition and Etching.

Printed component sizes in electronic circuits are approaching 10 nm, but inherent variability in feature alignment during photolithography poses a fundamental barrier for continued device scaling. Deposition-based self-aligned patterning is being introduced, but nuclei defects remain an overarching problem. This work introduces low-temperature chemically self-aligned film growth simultaneous thin film deposition and etching in adjacent regions on a nanopatterned surface.