갈륨질화물 나노 원뿔대 구조를 이용한 태양광 물분해 효율 향상

Abstract

Recently, solar water splitting has been one of the promising candidates for generating hydrogen ecofriendly. The efficiency of water splitting can be improved by enhancing the reaction between the light and photoelectrode material based on the following strategies: 1) widening a surface area, 2) reducing the surface reflection and 3) increasing the light path. These three goals can be achieved by introducing nanostructures. Meanwhile, various photoelectrode materials such as TiO2, ZnO, WO3, and so forth have been used for solar water splitting. However, these conventional materials exhibit weak points such as wide energy bandgap, low charge carrier mobility, and chemical corrosion in the electrolyte. On the other hand, GaN can overcome these limitations due to tunable band gap, an outstanding electrical feature, and chemical stability. Also, GaN nanostructures can be easily fabricated by using conventional semiconductor processing. Thus, in our research, we propose optimal nanostructures based on numerical simulations and demonstrate enhanced efficiencies for solar water splitting.