Enhanced water splitting with silver decorated GaN photoelectrode

By means of a cost-effective approach, we demonstrate a GaN-based photoelectrode decorated with self-organized silver nano-islands employed for solar powered hydrogen generation, demonstrating 4 times increase in photocurrent compared with a reference sample without using any silver. Our photoelectrode exhibits a 60% incident photon-to-electron conversion efficiency. The enhanced hydrogen generation is attributed to a significantly increased carrier generation rate as a result of strongly localized electric fields induced by surface plasmon coupling effect. The silver coating also contributes to the good chemical stability of our photoelectrode in a strong alkali electrolyte. This work paves the way for the development of GaN and also InGaN based photoelectrodes with ultra-high solar hydrogen conversion efficiency. (paper)