LAUSR

Abstract. Hematite is an appealing material for photoelectrochemical water splitting due to nearly ideal bandgap and Earth abundance. However, its short-distance hole transport has so far hindered exploiting its full potential. Two nanostructured transparent electrodes coated with a thin hematite layer are studied using full-field electromagnetic modeling. One structure comprises an ordered array of stripes of a transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and the other is composed of a square-lattice array of TCO nanorods. We find that height and filling ratio (FR) of the nanostructured elements constitutes the most crucial design parameter where the tall nanostructures with small FR constitute the ideal design for a nanostructured electrode with resonant-size elements. The simulations show that current densities up to 10.4  mA cm−2 can be obtained in a 20-nm thick hematite layer uniformly coated onto a properly designed nanostructured transparent conductive scaffold. Practical permittivity data are used in the simulation and the results show that these structures are quite robust against irregularities that might occur during the fabrications process.