Plasmonic Monolayer MoS ₂ for Ultrathin Photoelectrodes in Neutral Water
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.
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BibTeX
@misc{haas2026plasmonic,
title = {{Plasmonic Monolayer MoS ₂ for Ultrathin Photoelectrodes in Neutral Water}},
author = {Kyle Haas and Vivek Subramanian},
howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15010471/v1},
url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15010471/v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Plasmonic Monolayer MoS ₂ for Ultrathin Photoelectrodes in Neutral Water
AU - Kyle Haas
AU - Vivek Subramanian
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/14
PB - ChemRxiv
DO - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15010471/v1
UR - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15010471/v1
AB - 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.
ER -