Enhanced PEC performance of hematite photoanode coupled with bimetallic oxyhydroxide NiFeOOH through a simple electroless method

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is an important bottleneck in the development of economical photoelectrodes. Herein, we firstly prepared bimetallic oxyhydroxide NiFeOOH layer on Fe2O3 photoanode through a simple electroless ligand-regulated oxidation method in order to build highly-matched semiconductor/cocatalyst interface. Benefited from the accelerated OER kinetics and low overpotential of bimetallic oxyhydroxide NiFeOOH, the resultant Fe2O3/NiFeOOH core-shell with strongly-bound heterojunction interface possesses better visible light absorption, enhanced photocurrent density (1.83 mA/cm2 at 1.23 VRHE) and good stability than bare Fe2O3 and semi-FeOOH or NiOOH decorated Fe2O3 photoanodes. We believe this work provides a new pathway for designing high-quality contact interface of various photoelectrode/catalyst.