Fabrication of hierarchically ordered porous scheelite-related monoclinic BiVO₄ nanotubes by electrochemical deposition

Abstract

Scheelite-related monoclinic BiVO₄ is one of the most promising metal oxide photoanode materials. It is therefore highly desirable to explore its new nanostructured morphologies in order to achieve higher performance. We present a new method for the fabrication of porous BiVO₄ nanotubes. Powder XRD experiments show that the electrodeposited BiVO₄ nanotubes crystallize in the scheelite-related monoclinic phase. The produced BiVO₄ nanotubes are highly hierarchically ordered and aligned perpendicular to the electrically conductive substrate. The nanostructures were produced by template-assisted electrochemical deposition inside porous anodized alumina oxide. Our method may be extended to other semiconductor materials used in photoelectrochemical systems, such as Bi₂WO₆ and γ-Bi₂MoO₆.