Solution phase treatments of SbSe heterojunction photocathodes for improved water splitting performance.

Antimony selenide (SbSe) is an auspicious material for solar energy conversion that has seen rapid improvement over the past ten years, but the photovoltage deficit remains a challenge. Here, simple and low-temperature treatments of the p-n heterojunction interface of SbSe/TiO-based photocathodes for photoelectrochemical water splitting were explored to address this challenge. The FTO/Ti/Au/SbSe (substrate configuration) stack was treated with (NH)S as an etching solution, followed by CuCl treatment prior to deposition of the TiO by atomic layer deposition.