Spectroscopic Modeling of Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting

P. Cendula [1], J. O. Schumacher [1],
[1] Institute of Computational Physics, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Winterthur, Switzerland
Published in 2016

A photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell uses solar energy to split water to hydrogen and oxygen in single integrated device. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy is a suitable tool to characterize recombination and reaction mechanisms in PEC cell. Full numerical drift-diffusion calculations of the electrochemical impedance were conducted. The linear dependence of abscissa (real part) in Nyquist plot on hole lifetime and water oxidation rate was observed, enabling extraction of these two parameters from the comparison of slope of measured and simulated data.