Fabrication of hierarchically ordered porous scheelite-related monoclinic BiVO4 nanotubes by electrochemical deposition

Scheelite-related monoclinic BiVO 4 is one of the most promising metal oxide photoanode materials. It is therefore highly desirable to explore its new nanostructured morphologies in order to achieve higher performance. We present a new method for the fabrication of porous BiVO 4 nanotubes. Powder XRD experiments show that the electrodeposited BiVO 4 nanotubes crystallize in the scheelite-related monoclinic phase. The produced BiVO 4 nanotubes are highly hierarchically ordered and aligned perpendicular to the electrically conductive substrate. The nanostructures were produced by template-assisted electrochemical deposition inside porous anodized alumina oxide. Our method may be extended to other semiconductor materials used in photoelectrochemical systems, such as Bi 2 WO 6 and [Formula: see text]-Bi 2 MoO 6 .