Photoinduced electron transfer in WO3/BiVO4 heterojunction photoanodes : effects of the WO3 layer thickness

The photoelectrochemical performance of WO3/BiVO4 heterojunction photoanodes with a fixed BiVO4 thick top layer and different WO3 layer thicknesses was investigated under backside irradiation, in comparison with the performance of the same electrodes without top BiVO4 layer. While the performance of these latter increase with increasing WO3 thickness, the presence of a BiVO4 layer, besides leading to an effective sensitization up to 520 nm, leads to a decrease of incident photon to current efficiency in the short wavelengths range. After having excluded major WO3 filter effects, this has been attributed to charge carrier recombination effects occurring when both oxides get excited and becoming more relevant with increasing WO3 thickness and decreasing excitation wavelength.