Impact of the Synthesis Route on the Water Oxidation Kinetics of Hematite Photoanodes

Operando spectroelectrochemical analysis is used to determine the water oxidation reaction kinetics for hematite photoanodes prepared using four different synthetic procedures. While these photoanodes exhibit very different current/voltage performance, their underlying water oxidation kinetics are found to be almost invariant. Higher temperature thermal annealing was found to correlate with a shift in the photocurrent onset potential toward less positive potentials, assigned to a suppression of both back electron–hole recombination and of charge accumulation in intra-bandgap states, indicating these intra-bandgap states do not contribute directly to water oxidation.