Effect of Annealing Temperature on the Photoelectrochemical Performance of β-Bi_2O_3 Sol-Gel Thin Films

Bi2O3 thin films were successfully prepared on FTO substrates by the sol-gel route.The effect of annealing temperature on the film structure and photoelectrochemical performance was discussed.Bi2O3 thin films were characterized by X-ray diffraction(XRD),scanning electron microscopy(SEM),UV-vis spectroscopy and incident photon-to-electron conversion efficiency(IPCE).The results show that the 450 ℃ annealed sample shows a good crystallinity and possesses a band gap of 2.71 eV.The IPCE can reaches 25.5% at 350 nm without any additional potential vs Ag/AgCl in 1 mol/L NaOH solution.