Nature of Charge Carrier Recombination in CuWO4 Photoanodes for Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting

CuWO4 is a ternary semiconductor oxide with excellent visible light harvesting properties up to 550 nm and stability at high pH values, which make it a suitable material to build photoanodes for solar light conversion to hydrogen via water splitting. In this work, we studied the photoelectrochemical (PEC) performance of transparent CuWO4 electrodes with tunable light absorption and thickness, aiming at identifying the intrinsic bottlenecks of photogenerated charge carriers in this semiconductor. We found that electrodes with optimal CuWO4 thickness exhibit visible light activity due to the absorption of long-wavelength photons and a balanced electron and hole extraction from the oxide. The PEC performance of CuWO4 is light-intensity-dependent, with charge recombination increasing with light intensity and most photogenerated charge carriers recombining in bulk sites, as demonstrated by PEC tests performed in the presence of sacrificial agents or cocatalysts. The best-performing 580 nm thick CuWO4 electrode delivers a photocurrent of 0.37 mA cm-2 at 1.23 VSHE, with a 7% absorbed photon to current efficiency over the CuWO4 absorption spectrum.