The electrochemical catalytic effects of the NiO islands and layer on n-type GaN were investigated. The NiO islands covered some parts of the GaN surface and were seen to improve photoanodic current and prevent photoanodic corrosion. However, the NiO layer was found to worsen the photoanodic current. Hole transportation is thought to occur from the GaN valence band edge to the NiO valence band edge in their surface plane direction due to the band alignment. In addition, the electron capture for water oxidation is expected to be the valence band edge of the NiO instead of the intermediate state.

The n-type GaN has stability problem of the surface anodic corrosion during the photoelectrochemical reaction for H2 generation. The photoelectrochemical surface stabilities of n-type GaN dependent on the electrolytes were investigated. The flatband potential in HCl obtained from Mott-Schottky plot shifted 0.1 V to positive direction compared with that in H2SO4. The variation of saturated photocurrent of 1 to 3 cycles in H2SO4 was much larger than that of HCl, NaOH and KOH. The surface morphologies also changed by the electrolytes. These results show the absorbed materials on the GaN electrode surface during the photoelectrochemical reactions were changed by the electrolyte and affected the surface reactions.

Water-splitting by using electric power produced by solar cells is promising system to produce hydrogen without fossil fuels. Oxygen evolving catalyst is, however, major problem to prevent using this system widely because precious materials are used in the catalyst. Considering from the photosynthesis II of plants, the compound of Ca-Mn-O is one of the candidates for the oxygen evolving catalyst. In this study, the synthesis condition and the oxygen evolving electrocatalytic activity of CaMn2O4•xH2O are investigated. The overpotential at 0.1 mA/cm2 was 0.28 V when using the electrode of carbon paste and CaMn2O4•H2O with the weight ratio of 3:1.

Electrochemical reduction of CO2 into useful organics combined with photovoltaics is thought to be one of the promising ways to effectively store and transport the solar energy. In most of the previous researches, CO2 bubbling in different solutions were used as the electrolyte. However, the effects of the electrolyte and the CO2 bubbling are not clear. Therefore, in this research, the effects of different electrolyte, CO2 bubbling, concentration of the electrolyte and temperature on the electrochemical reduction of CO2 on a Cu working electrode were studied. The results showed that the form of the carbon source in the electrolyte, such as HCO3-, CO32- and H2CO3, had a strong effect on this reaction, which was controlled by the pH of the electrolyte. Furthermore, high concentration of the HCO3- and elevated temperature can strongly improve the reaction current density.

Energy storage is a key technology for establishing a stand-alone renewable energy system. Current energy-storage technologies are, however, not suitable for such an energy system. They are cost ineffective and/or are with low energy-conversion efficiency. Hydrogen generation and storage from water by sunlight is one of these technologies. In this study, a simple concept of hydrogen generation from water by using sunlight, “concentrated photovoltaic electrochemical cell (CPEC)” is proposed. It is experimentally shown that the CPEC operates stably and achieves conversion efficiency from light to hydrogen energy of over 12%.

Photoelectrochemical properties of nitride semiconductors are paid attention due to their possibilities of water splitting by visible light absorption. However, the photocurrent density of InxGa1-xN, which absorbs visible light, is usually lower than that of GaN, which has larger band-gap and absorbing only UV light. The reasons of this are thought to be the band-edge position at the semiconductor-electrolyte interface and the crystal quality. The conduction band-edge decreases with increasing of indium composition and across the hydrogen generation energy at around the indium composition of 0.2. This means that the hydrogen generation ability decreases with increasing of indium composition. Low crystal quality is obtained because the lower growth temperature of InxGa1-xN than that of GaN to achieve the indium incorporation. In order to improve the photocurrent density, band-edge energy control and quantum tunneling effect are tried using the structure of thin GaN layer on InxGa1-xN here. The effect for the photocurrent densities is also discussed.

Photoelectrochemical properties of Ga- and N-face GaN grown by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) were investigated. The properties were also compared with Ga-face GaN grown by metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE). The flatband potentials were in order of Ga-face GaN grown by MOVPE < N-face GaN < Ga-face GaN. The highest photocurrent density at zero bias was obtained from the N-face GaN. The photocurrent density was over 3 times larger than that of Ga-face GaN.

GaN nanodots and nanorods were successfully grown on Si (111) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. Photocurrent densities of GaN nanodots were quite small compared with thick GaN layer grown by metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy. The current density, however, increases with GaN nanodot density. The highest photocurrent density of the GaN nanodots was higher than that of the layer structure with similar thickness (up to 10 nm) to the nanodot height. GaN nanorods have much higher photocurrent density than that of GaN nanodots. Enough nanostructure size for light absorption is important to achieve good photoelectrochemical performance.

Removing artificial oxide layer is important for fabrication process of semiconductor devices. We employed photoluminescence for optical, reflection high energy electron diffraction, atomic force microscope, and Nomarski microscope for surface analysis. We found that it is more difficult to remove the oxide layer made by O-plasma such as in O-plasma asher than that of native one. Our result reached that HF etching is effective for removal of the artificial oxide layer without changing surface morphology. In addition, (NH4)2Sx treatment after HF etching reduces donor bound exciton drastically which is dominant luminescence near the band edge at low temperature.

In order to clarify the charge transfer characteristics for H2 generation, photoelectrochemical properties of n-type GaN in HCl solution were investigated. The flatband potential under illumination and the onset voltages of photocurrent located approximately the same position. From the result, we concluded that the positively charged surface by hole capture is the main reason of the extra voltage requirement for H2 generation. The carrier concentration in n-type GaN also affects the photocurrent.

Dislocations and some other lattice defects were observed in typical III-V semiconducting materials. The usefulness of electron microscopy is emphasized and some examples of characterizing the nature of lattice imperfections are presented here.