Scalable and durable module-sized artificial leaf with a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency over 10%
Dharmesh Hansora, Rashmi Mehrotra, Eunseo Noh, Jin Wook Yoo, Minkyung Kim, Woo Jin Byun, Jaewang Park, Ji‐Wook Jang, Sang Il Seok, Jae Sung Lee
Abstract
An artificial leaf mimicking the function of a natural leaf has recently attracted significant attention due to its minimal space requirement and low cost compared to wired photoelectrochemical and photovoltaic-electrochemical systems for solar hydrogen production. However, it remains a challenge to achieve a practical-size solar water-splitting device that can fulfill the criteria of a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency above 10%, long-term durability, and scalability. Here, we develop 1 cm2 perovskite-based photoelectrodes using a defect-less, chlorine-doped formamidinium lead triiodide as photo-absorber and ultraviolet-insensitive tin oxide as an electron transport layers. This device is encapsulated using electrocatalyst-deposited nickel foils, which demonstrates high photocurrent density and high stability for 140 h. Ultimately, we fabricate a scalable mini-module-sized artificial leaf (16 cm2) consisting of a side-by-side/parallel configuration of photoanode and photocathode architecture integrated with a 4 × 4 array of 1 cm2 photoelectrodes, which maintains a stable ‘module-level’ solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 11.2% in an unbiased solar water-splitting under 1-sun illumination. Here the authors demonstrate a scalable and durable minimodule size artificial leaf with a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of >10% using a metal-halide perovskite-based photoelectrodes encapsulated with metal foil deposited co-catalysts.