Improvement in photoelectrochemical performance of hydrogen treated MoO3 nanorods

Molybdenum Trioxide (MoO3) nanorods (NRs) have been prepared by hydrothermal synthesis technique. The prepared nanorods are further annealed in 5% hydrogen balanced argon atmosphere to obtain hydrogen treated MoO3 (H:MoO3) NRs. The effect of hydrogen treatment on the structural, morphological, optical and photoelectrochemical (PEC) properties has been studied. Crystal structure is characterized by X-ray diffraction and it reveals polycrystalline nature in thermodynamically stable orthorhombic phase with slight increase in crystallite size after hydrogen treatment. Optical studies using diffuse reflectance spectra reveal that the hydrogen treatment of MoO3 nanostructure improves the absorption in visible spectral region. PEC study shows approximate 5-fold increment in photocurrent in H:MoO3 (10.1 mA/cm2) as compared to MoO3 (2.2 mA/cm2) at applied bias of -0.9 V vs Ag/AgCl in 0.5 M Na2SO4.