Hossein Shirkani

With the growth of population, the decrease of fossil resources and the increase of environmental pollution caused by the consumption of these non-renewable resources, the necessity of achieving a clean, sustainable and cost-effective energy source is felt more than ever. In the meantime, hydrogen has been considered as an efficient energy carrier and its production through water splitting with the help of solar energy is considered as a promising method. In this research, copper sulfide nanorods were synthesized and investigated for the construction of the working electrode in the photoelectrochemical system. Copper sulfide nanorods were produced using the chemical co-precipitation method due to their simplicity and low cost. In the photoelectrochemical cell, a platinum electrode was used as the counter electrode, silver/silver chloride as the reference electrode and an FTO glass substrate as the working electrode. A 250 W xenon lamp was used to provide light. In order to investigate the structure and morphology of the samples, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy tests were performed, and the results confirmed the formation of copper sulfide nanorods. In the final stage, photoelectrochemical testing was performed using linear scanning voltammetry (LSV) which showed a photocurrent density of 825.81 microamperes/cm2 under simulated sunlight.