Surface treatment of hematite photoanodes with zinc acetate for water oxidation.

A simple and inexpensive method to form a hematite photoanode for efficient water oxidation is reported. A very thin ZnO overlayer was deposited on top of a thin film of hematite and found, compared with non-treated hematite, to increase the photocurrent and reduce the onset potential for generating oxygen from water. After 3 cycles of ZnAc treatment, the photocurrent increased more than 40% to 1.