Photoirradiation-Induced Capacitance Enhancement in the h-WO₃/Bi₂WO₆ Submicron Rod Heterostructure under Simulated Solar Illumination and Its Postillumination Capacitance Enhancement Retainment from a Photocatalytic Memory Effect

Recently, photoassisted charging has been demonstrated as a green and sustainable approach to successfully enhance the capacitance of supercapacitors with low cost and good efficiency. However, their light-induced capacitance enhancement is relatively low and is lost quickly when the illumination is off. In this work, a novel active material system is developed for supercapacitors with the photoassisted charging capability by the decoration of a small amount of Bi2WO6 nanoparticles on an h-WO3 submicron rod surface in situ, which forms a typical type II band alignment heterostructure with a close contact interface through the co-sharing of W atoms between h-WO3 submicron rods and Bi2WO6 nanoparticles. The photogenerated charge carrier separation and transfer are largely enhanced in the h-WO3/Bi2WO6 submicron rod electrode, which subsequently allows more charge carriers to participate in its photoassisted charging process to largely enhance its capacitance improvement under simulated solar illumination than that of the h-WO3 submicron rod electrode. Furthermore, the h-WO3/Bi2WO6 submicron rod electrode could retain its photoinduced capacitance enhancement in the dark for an extended period of time from the photocatalytic memory effect. Thus, our work provides a solution to the two major drawbacks of reported supercapacitors with the light-induced capacitance enhancement property, and supercapacitors based on active materials with the photocatalytic memory effect could be utilized in various technical fields.