%0 Thesis
%A Kroetzsch, Kilian
%T An Operando Study on Photo-electrochemically Active CuBi<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub> Thin-films via X-ray PDF Analysis.
%I University of Hamburg
%V Bachelorarbeit
%M PUBDB-2021-04719
%P 53
%D 2021
%Z Bachelorarbeit, University of Hamburg, 2021
%X In this thesis, a new method of performing total X-ray scattering measurements of photo-electrochemically (PEC) active CuBi2O4 thin-films in operando was investigated. The thin-films were fabricated via spin-coating of a precursor solution containing Cu and Bi ions onto an FTO-coated glass substrate. The method was first introduced by S. Medicus. Two different additives, namely ethylene glycol (EG) and glycerol (GL), were added to the precursor solution to increase the homogeneity and compactness of the thin-films. We explored the use of an on-purpose designed operando PEC cell as opposed to a commercial PEC cell for the diagnostic measurements on the photoactive films and proved that similar values of photovoltage and photocurrents are generally obtained with either of them. Due to the space constraints inside the measurement chamber at the beamline at PETRA III synchrotron at DESY (Hamburg), a LED illumination unit was used as an alternative to standard AM1.5 solar simulators and found to be a viable solution. The spot size of the illumination on the sample, the nature of the additive and the amount of layers of the spin-coated films were optimised in terms of the PEC performance. Two LEDs with different wavelenghts of their emitted light were also compared in terms of the PEC performance of the material. The grazing incidence geometry used for the operando total scattering measurements enabled high surface sensitivity for the pair distribution function (PDF) analysis of the sample. Our study can potentially give new insights into the structural changes of the PEC active material during water splitting, and ultimately aid in boasting the long term stability of the material.
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)2
%9 Bachelor Thesis
%U https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/471875