LI Jian ^{1, 2}, GUO Xinghua ², ZHANG Dengsong ¹, WANG Degao ²
(1. College of Sciences, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China; 2. Engineering Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo 315201, Zhejiang, China)

Abstract: Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting offers a compelling and sustainable strategy to convert solar energy to hydrogen. The complex and slow water oxidation reaction limits the rate of water splitting, which has led to intensive research on the design and preparation of efficient photoanodes. The transition metal water oxidation catalysts, including heterogeneous and homogeneous noble-free metal water oxidation catalysts and noble metal water oxidation catalysts, will be summarized. The construction of transition metal-based photoanodes and their properties will be presented, including inorganic semiconductor photoanodes TiO₂, Fe₂O₃, BiVO₄ and dye-sensitized photoanodes. Strategies and development for the construction of efficient and stable water splitting photoanodes are proposed to provide reference for the realization of efficient and economical solar-hydrogen conversion on industrial scale in the future.
Key words: water splitting; water oxidation; transition metal water oxidation catalyst; dye-sensitized photoanode