Improving photoelectrochemical performance of α-Fe2O3 photoanode by ethylene glycol assisted antimony treatment.

• α-Fe 2 O 3 photoanode was modified by antimony. • Ethylene glycol was an excellent solvent for antimony treatment. • The α-Fe2O3 photoanodes combined with antimony post-treatment showed the best photoelectrochemical performance. The photoelectrochemical (PEC) performance of α-Fe 2 O 3 photoanode suffers from the high carrier recombination rate and the short hole diffusion distance. Enhancing its carrier transport is an important way to improve its performance. In this paper, α-Fe 2 O 3 films were synthesized by hydrothermal method and further optimized by ethylene glycol assisted antimony treatment. Antimony treatment can be divided into pre-annealing and post-annealing treatment. The photocurrent of hematite photoanode post-annealing treated by Sb dissolved in ethylene glycol photoanode can reach to 1.18 mA cm−2, which is 1.6 times higher than that of bare α-Fe 2 O 3 photoanode. The improvement of PEC performance is mainly attributed to the effective inhibition of carrier recombination by antimony treatment. In addition, the slope of the Mott-Schottky curves of Fe 2 O 3 can be obviously changed by antimony treatment, demonstrating the significant increase of carrier concentration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]