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Numerous studies have shown that the addition of different impurities as dopants in hematite (α-Fe2O3) photoanodes improves water photo-oxidation. The improvements observed may have resulted from electronic and/or catalytic effects, but also from changes in the layer morphology and microstructure induced by different precursors. The latter could be quite substantial, especially in mesoporous layers produced by chemical routes, making it difficult to make a systematic comparison between different dopants. This work attempts to overcome this difficulty by comparing different dopants in thin films produced by pulsed laser deposition (PLD), a physical deposition method that produces highly reproducible films with no significant variations in the microstructure and morphology. This enables systematic comparison of the effect of different dopants without spurious side effects due to variations in the microstructure …