Enhancing Photoelectrochemical Performance of Sb₂S₃ through Single-Crystal Growth on Ni-Coated FTO Substrates

Sb2S3 is a binary compound semiconductor composed of elements that have a large absorption coefficient of solar energy and are relatively abundant on Earth, and it has recently spurred great interest as a promising light-absorbing material for solar energy conversion. Sb2S3 consists of one-dimensional (1-D) covalently linked nanoribbons stacked via van der Waals forces. Therefore, one-dimensional (1-D) Sb2S3 single crystals can be synthesized by adjusting the experimental conditions. However, most of these studies focused on hydrothermal methods, and it took more than 10 h to prepare a one-dimensional Sb2S3 single crystal. In this study, a novel approach is presented to fabricate single-crystal Sb2S3 pillars by spin coating Sb2S3 precursor solution on Au- and Ni-coated FTO glasses with significantly enhanced photoelectrochemical performance compared to Sb2S3 prepared on bare FTO glass and Mo-coated FTO glass.