| Iron oxide is an extensively studied semiconductor material in the field of renewable energy and hydrogen production due to its versatile properties such as visible light absorption ,small bandgap, stability in solutions with variety of pH and most importantly being cheap and abundant. Although it has a maximum theoretical solar to hydrogen efficiency of about 16% , its intrinsic properties such as low oxygen evolution reaction, short carrier life time and diffusion length prevented from achieving such efficiencies and being commercially available. In this paper Iron oxide nanowires were created using a facile and cost effect solution growth. Carrier concentration, charge separation and Oxygen evolution reaction kinetics of the device was improved by simple sputtering method of gold as an underlayer and Ti as a dopant. Calcination to temperatures up to 800 °C results in additional Sn doping by diffusion from FTO layer as well as crystal structure improvement. All though XRD measurements show no evidence on existence of TiOx more detailed measurements such as XPS is required to validate the results. The exact mechanism of charge separation, surface passivation and carrier concentration as a result of Ti and Au deposition can be investigated in the future work by Mott Shottky measurements. |
