{
  "abstract": "Photoelectrochemical (PEC) electrodes can be used to create hydrogen to sustainably generate low-cost fuel and produce petrochemical feedstock. However, most semiconductors that drive the aqueous redox reactions in PEC devices cannot survive in neutral water, critical for widescale commercial production. Emerging, two-dimensional monolayer semiconductors can be electrochemically stable but generally do not capture enough sunlight to produce effective amounts of hydrogen. In this work, we propose a new PEC architecture that uses plasmonic enhancement to increase photocurrent in a monolayer MoS 2 photocathode. By creating the first ZrN-based surface plasmon polariton (SPP) generator, we show fabricated nanostructures that plasmonically couple light with energies up to ~2.5 eV in water with near-100% light absorption. With transferred monolayer MoS 2 , the resulting Schottky diode demonstrates corrosion-free, fully stable photoactivity under 1-sun illumination in oxygenated, neutral water. We investigated and optimized the mechanisms of plasmonic enhancement, increasing photocurrent by up to 2.7x under AM1.5G illumination and 660% with wavelengths above the bandgap of monolayer MoS 2 . Furthermore, we show this architecture is compatible with standard roll-to-roll fabrication, and we use a technoeconomic analysis to estimate that levelized costs of hydrogen <$1/kg can be reasonably achieved with solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiencies of only 3.4%. Thus, with commercially scalable operational lifetimes and fabrication techniques, these results open the door to a new class of ultrathin PEC electrodes for economically feasible neutral water splitting applications.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 2,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Kyle Haas"
    },
    {
      "name": "Vivek Subramanian"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/1rnfhc60vk025.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.26434/chemrxiv.15010471/v1",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "1rnfhc60vk025",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15010471/v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "2105|Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221835875",
  "pdf_url": null,
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-14",
  "publisher": "American Chemical Society (ACS)",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/1rnfhc60vk025.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:24Z",
      "native_id": "10.26434/chemrxiv.15010471",
      "source": "chemrxiv",
      "url": "https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15010471/v1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "chemistry",
      "origin": "source:chemrxiv",
      "subfield": "general"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Plasmonic Monolayer MoS ₂ for Ultrathin Photoelectrodes in Neutral Water",
  "title_text": "Plasmonic Monolayer MoS ₂ for Ultrathin Photoelectrodes in Neutral Water",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:24Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/1rnfhc60vk025",
  "venue": "ChemRxiv",
  "versions": []
}