Solar Light Harvesting with Nanocrystalline Semiconductors Lecture Notes in Chemistry

Lecture Notes in Chemistry 99 Oleksandr Stroyuk Solar Light Harvesting with Nanocrystalline Semiconductors Lecture Notes in Chemistry Volume 99 Series editors Barry Carpenter, Cardiff, UK Paola Ceroni, Bologna, Italy Barbara Kirchner, Bonn, Germany Katharina Landfester, Mainz, Germany Jerzy Leszczynski, Jackson, USA Tien-Yau Luh, Taipei, Taiwan Eva Perlt, Bonn, Germany Nicolas C. Polfer, Gainesville, USA Reiner Salzer, Dresden, Germany The Lecture Notes in Chemistry The series Lecture Notes in Chemistry (LNC) reports new developments in chemistry and molecular science-quickly and informally, but with a high quality and the explicit aim to summarize and communicate current knowledge for teaching and training purposes. Books published in this series are conceived as bridging material between advanced graduate textbooks and the forefront of research. They will serve the following purposes: • provide an accessible introduction to the field to postgraduate students and nonspecialist researchers from related areas, • provide a source of advanced teaching material for specialized seminars, courses and schools, and • be readily accessible in print and online. The series covers all established fields of chemistry such as analytical chemistry, organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry including electrochemistry, theoretical and computational chemistry, industrial chemistry, and catalysis. It is also a particularly suitable forum for volumes addressing the interfaces of chemistry with other disciplines, such as biology, medicine, physics, engineering, materials science including polymer and nanoscience, or earth and environmental science. Both authored and edited volumes will be considered for publication. Edited volumes should however consist of a very limited number of contributions only. Proceedings will not be considered for LNC. The year 2010 marks the relaunch of LNC. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/632 Oleksandr Stroyuk Solar Light Harvesting with Nanocrystalline Semiconductors 123 Oleksandr Stroyuk Laboratory of Organic Photovoltaics and Electrochemistry L.V. Pysarzhevsky Institute of Physical Chemistry Kiev Ukraine ISSN 0342-4901 ISSN 2192-6603 (electronic) Lecture Notes in Chemistry ISBN 978-3-319-68878-7 ISBN 978-3-319-68879-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68879-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955261 © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface The solar light conversion and storage is currently one of the most blossoming interdisciplinary fields of science converging the physical chemistry, physics of solid state, optics, photochemistry, electrochemistry, catalysis, and many other research directions. The present textbook is intended to give a perspective on the current state of photochemical systems for the solar light harvesting based on nanocrystalline semiconductor materials and assemblies. The book chapters provide an account on various aspects of such systems, including the solar water splitting and evolution of molecular hydrogen, the photosynthetic processes of CO2 and N2 reduction, and the photoelectrochemical solar cells based on nanoparticulate semiconductor materials. A special focus is made on a “nano” aspect of semiconductor photocatalysis—the role of nanocrystals and size effects in the solar energy conversion, the design of semiconductor nanostructures with tailored photochemical properties, and the perspectives of nanophotocatalysis and photovoltaic systems based on semiconductor quantum dots. The introduction provides a brief account on various concepts of the solar light harvesting using the bulk and nanocrystalline semiconductors as well as a short historical account on the development of various photochemical and photovoltaic light conversion technologies. The first chapter is an introduction to the photochemistry of semiconductor nanoparticles (NPs). It highlights basic principles of the selection of semiconductor materials for the applications in the solar light harvesting and requirements to the optical and electrophysical properties of photoactive semiconductor NPs. The chapter is focused on special features of the nanocrystalline semiconductors, in particular, on the quantum size effects and a unique capability of semiconductor NPs for the photoinduced charging. We discuss the most prominent size effects in the photochemistry of semiconductor NPs such as a dramatic enhancement of the photocatalytic/photoelectrochemical activity of nanocrystalline semiconductors as compared to their bulk counterparts, a crucial role of the surface charge traps in the photochemical processes, the effects of NP shape and porosity, the charging- induced changes in the NP photoreactivity, etc. v vi Preface The second and third chapters provide a review of the current state of the art in the semiconductor-based light-harvesting systems for the water splitting and the reduction of carbon dioxide and dinitrogen. The semiconductor-catalyzed photochemical water splitting for the hydrogen production as a green and sustainable fuel is discussed in detail. A review of the photocatalytic systems for the photosynthetic reduction of water, CO2, and N2 encompasses the systems based on the dye-sensitized oxide nanocrystalline semiconductors, binary semiconductor heterostructures, a survey of the visible-light-sensitive metal-chalcogenide nanophotocatalysts, and new and emerging nanostructured photocatalysts and cocatalysts of these photosynthetic processes. The fourth chapter introduces the reader to the semiconductor-based photoelectrochemical solar cells designed for the conversion of solar light into electric current. As the topic of dye-sensitized liquid-junction semiconductor solar cells has recently been broadly covered elsewhere, the discussion is limited mostly to the semiconductor nanoparticle-sensitized solar cells with liquid electrolytes, where the light conversion occurs as a result of a cyclic series of photochemical/photocatalytic processes and secondary “dark” redox reactions. The fifth chapter provides a concise account on typical synthetic approaches used for the preparation of various semiconductor nanomaterials—the colloidal NPs, nanocrystalline powders, thin films, binary and more complex nanoheterostructures, and nanocomposites of semiconductors with other functional components, such as metal NPs, carbonaceous compounds, etc. The final sixth chapter has a methodological character and acquaints the readers with the experimental methods using light as a probe of the structure, electrophysical, photophysical, and photochemical properties of nanocrystalline semiconductors and related heterostructures. The chapter discusses the methods of absorption and photoluminescence spectroscopy, flash photolysis, and other spec- troscopic techniques that can be used to gain insights into the photochemical behavior of semiconductor NPs. I would like to thank all persons who helped me in writing this book, particularly, to my wife, Dr. Alexandra Raevskaya, a trusted friend and colleague, for her steady support and discussions on the book subject. Also, I appreciate deeply the experience and skills acquired by my coauthoring with senior peers from L.V. Pysarzhevsky Institute of Physical Chemistry, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine—Prof. Anatoliy Kryukov, Prof. Stepan Kuchmiy, and Prof. Vitaliy Pokhodenko. Recently, we have published a comprehensive book on semiconductor nanophotocatalysis (Publishing House “Akademperiodika”, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2014) and the coauthoring of this book has been a source of invaluable experience and constant inspiration for me. As this book was written during my stay in Technical University of Dresden as a Marie-Skłodowska Curie Fellow, the support of European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (Grant No. 701254) is deeply appreciated. Preface vii I hope that the present book will be useful both for a novice reader who starts a journey into the exciting world of the solar light-harvesting science and for an advanced reader who is already familiar with the field and seeks

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