Soniya Gahlawat

CEST | CEST · Applied Interface Physics - TU Vienna

Carbon‐based electrodes are used in flow batteries to provide active centers for vanadium redox reactions. However, strong controversy exists about the exact origin of these centers. This study systematically explores the influence of structural and functional groups on the vanadium redox reactions at carbon surfaces. Pyridine, phenol and butyl con...

The degradation and aging of carbon felt electrodes is a main reason for the performance loss of Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries over extended operation time.

The associated use of limited fossil fuels has also aroused an urgent need to seek for alternative, renewable energy sources. In this regard, hydrogen is the potential and green alternative to replace fossil fuels. Photo-electrochemical (PEC) water splitting towards the production of hydrogen is one of research hotspots, which has received signific...

Hematite (Fe 2 O 3 ) is a promising photoanode towards photoelectrochemical (PEC) water oxidation, but its efficiency is hampered by low conductivity and slow surface kinetics. To overcome this, we successfully explored the surface modification of Fe 2 O 3 photoanodes with the electrodeposited amorphous MnO x co-catalyst having unique nano-fibrous...

Barium stannate (BaSnO3) crystallizes in the cubic perovskite-type structure and typically exhibits a wide band gap of >3.0 eV; thus, it is often considered unsuitable as a photo-absorber material for solar energy conversion. We present a spray-pyrolysis method for the fabrication of BaSnO3 photoanodes, with a smaller optical gap of ∼2.2 eV. By ann...

Bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) is a promising photoanode material for photoelectrochemical water splitting due to its relative stability, low‐cost and non‐toxic properties. However, its performance is limited by the large band gap (Eg) of 2.4 eV, and the record photocurrent is already within 90% of its theoretical limit. Further photocurrent enhancement...

The electrocatalytic water splitting activity of layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) is limited by inert basal planes and slower reaction kinetics. Here, we demonstrate the use of MoSe2–Cu2S nanoheterostructures (NHSs) as an efficient electrocatalyst for water splitting. The interfacial engineering of the basal planes of MoSe2 nanosheet...

The unique atomic arrangement and excellent charge transfer properties of the two-dimensional (2D) metal chalcogenides (MX2; M= transition metal, X= S, Se) make them promising electrocatalyst towards water splitting. Still, none so far being able to replace noble-metal catalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER), remains a great challenge. Specif...

Peptide-based conducting nanomaterials are promising candidates for bioelectronics. Despite the remarkable advancements in the field of organic field effect transistors (OFETs), the peptide-based OFETs with high mobility are scarce. We, herein, report the phenylalanine amino acid-based core-modified self-assembling peptidic polymers showing p-type...

The article reports the preparation of unique worm-like BiVO4 nanoparticles through hydrothermal treatment of scheelite tetragonal BiVO4 obtained by simple precipitation method. The as obtained nano-worms were ~3-6 nm in width and ~12-20 nm in length. Their time dependent growth evolution was studied via transmission electron microscope and coupled...

Burstein-Moss (B-M) effect which suggests that the optical band gap of degenerately doped semiconductor increases when all states close to conduction band get populated due to shifting of an absorption edge to higher energy, is important, as it gives a chance to obtain different optical properties for the same material. Here, we report our observat...

Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) nanosheets (NSs) with defect-rich and vertically aligned edges are highly advantageous for various catalytic applications. However, colloidal synthesis of defect-rich NSs with thickness variation has been a challenging task. Here, we report a colloidal synthesis of \(\hbox {2H-MoSe}_{2}\) NSs having a large num...

In the recent past, there has been a large-scale utilization of plant extracts for the synthesis of various photocatalysts. The biofabrication technology eliminates the usage of harmful chemicals and serves as an eco-friendly approach for environmental remediation. Herein, a comparative analysis between bismuth oxyiodide synthesized via Azadirachta...

Novel green bismuth oxybromide (BiOBr-G) nanoflowers were successfully synthesized via facile hydrolysis route using an Azadirachta indica (Neem plant) leaf extract and concurrently, without the leaf extract (BiOBr-C). The Azadirachta indica leaf extract was employed as a sensitizer and stabilizer for BiOBr-G, which significantly expanded the optic...

Here, we report the enhanced photoelectrochemical performance of surface modified hematite thin films with n-type copper oxide nanostructures (Cu2O/Fe2O3) obtained through simple electrochemical deposition method. The thickness and amount of cuprous oxide layer were varied by simply changing the number of electrodeposition cycles (viz. 5, 10, 25, 5...