Modification of solar energy and photoelectrochemical water splitting properties: using FTO/Er-TiO₂/MAPbI₃/CuPc/Au as modified photoelectrode

Abstract In the past decades, converting solar energy into hydrogen through photoelectrochemical water splitting has been attracted. Here, we designed a new FTO/Er-TiO 2 /MAPbI 3 /CuPc/Au photoanode with n-i-p structure for using in solar water splitting. Accourding to obtained PEC results, the FTO/Er-TiO 2 /MAPbI 3 /CuPc/Au photoanode has a photocurrent density of ∼9.8 mA cm −2 ( under a visible lamp with intensity of 100 mW cm −2 irradiation) compared to FTO/Er-TiO 2 /Au and FTO/Er-TiO 2 /MAPbI 3 /Au photoanodes with photocurrent density of 0.7 and 6.12 mA cm −2 , respectively. This important enhancement is refered to the light absorption feature of Er-TiO 2 /MAPbI 3 and a fast electron and hole transfer process in the Er-TiO 2 and CuPc, respectively. The photoelectrochemical action of the photoelectrode is increased using erbium doping due to creation of oxygen vacancies and titanium (III) ions. Furthermore, in this research, we studided the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of FTO/Er-TiO 2 /MAPbI 3 /Au and FTO/Er-TiO 2 /MAPbI 3 /CuPc/Au solar cells. The results shown that the significant enhancement in photovoltaic properties can be observed by utilizing spin-coated CuPc nanoparticles (as hole transport layer) at least by 1.39% compared to the FTO/Er-TiO 2 /MAPbI 3 perovskite solar cell.