Improved charge kinetics of BiVO4/MoS2 photoanode by an TiO2 electron transport layer for photocatalytic fuel cell photodegradation and electricity generation

The poor contact between the photocatalyst and the FTO substrate are the main factors lead to the low performance of photocatalytic fuel cell (PFC). Herein, a FTO pre-treated with a TiO2 electron transport layer was used as a substrate for the synthesis of the MoS2/BiVO4/pre-FTO photoanode. The proposed MBV-4/pre-FTO photoanode with its enhances the visible light absorption and effectively delays the recombination of the photoexcited charge. The MBV-4/pre-FTO composite photoanode (6.02 mA/cm2) exhibited a photocurrent density that was 2.2 times higher than that of the BiVO4 photoanode (2.78 mA/cm2). This is attributed to the short charge migration length of the thin MoS2 layer, the fast photoexcited electron transport effect of the TiO2 seed layer, and the heterojunction structure of the proposed photoanode. The DFT calculation result indicated that the TiO2 electron transport layer showed an outstanding photoelectron attractive and transporting effect. The MoS2/Ni foam was employed as the photocathode to establish a mismatched Fermi level for driving PFC. The short-circuit current, open-circuit voltage, and maximum power density of the PFC were 0.578 mA/cm2, 0.632 V, and 0.125 mW/cm2, respectively. The main photodegradation active species are the superoxide anion (∙O2–) and the photoexcited hole (h+), and the degradation efficiency is 61.97 %.