Super-hydrophilic CoAl-LDH on BiVO4 for enhanced photoelectrochemical water oxidation activity

In this work, a simple hydrothermal and plasma treatment strategy is adopted to prepare super-hydrophilic H-CoAl-LDH/BiVO4 photoanode. The water affinity of the as-prepared photoanode and its water oxidation performance were investigated. The super-hydrophilic anode can provide a photocurrent of 3.5 mA/cm2 at 1.23 V vs. RHE (0.5 M Na2SO4, AM 1.5 G illumination), which is about 3.2 times that of pure BiVO4 photoanode. Moreover, loading of H-CoAl-LDH also significantly enhances the charge separation efficiency and charge injection efficiency of the electrode. These findings here present a facile approach to enhance the performance of BiVO4 anode in the future application of PEC water splitting.