Black Silicon Photoanodes Entirely Prepared with Abundant Materials by Low-Cost Wet Methods

We report a new design for water-splitting photoanodes, based on a highly absorbing black silicon (BSi) substrate modified with catalytic metal nanoparticles (NPs). The overall fabrication strategy is cost-efficient as it only requires the use of abundant materials and simple wet procedures such as electrochemical etching and electrodeposition and does not involve the use of a buried homojunction and protection layer. Importantly, these results demonstrate that electrodeposited transition metal NPs can stabilize structured Si photoelectrodes without the need for a protection layer