title: Well-Steered Charge-Carrier Transfer in 3D Branched CuxO/ZnO@Au Heterostructures for Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution.
abstract: Multi-component hetero-nanostructures exhibit multifunctional properties or synergistic performance and are thus considered as attractive materials for energy conversion applications. There is a long-standing demand to construct more sophisticated heterostructures for steering charge-carrier flow in semiconductor systems. Herein we fabricate a large-scale quantity of three-dimensional (3D) branched CuxO/ZnO@Au heterostructure consisting of CuO nanowires (NWs) and grafted ZnO nanodisks (NDs) decorated with Au nanoparticles via sequential hierarchical assemblies. This treelike hetero-nanostructure ensures well-steered transfer of photogenerated electrons to the exposed ZnO NDs, while holes to the CuO backbone NWs with concerted efforts from multi-node p-n junctions, polar ZnO facets, and Au plasmon, resulting in the significantly enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance.
authors.affiliation: School of physics Science and Technology, Yangzhou University , Yangzhou 225002, China.
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: School of physics Science and Technology, Yangzhou University , Yangzhou 225002, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoyong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University , Nanyang Avenue, 639798 Singapore.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: School of physics Science and Technology, Yangzhou University , Yangzhou 225002, China.
authors.forename: Bing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: School of physics Science and Technology, Yangzhou University , Yangzhou 225002, China.
authors.forename: Zhijia
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Bao
authors.affiliation: School of physics Science and Technology, Yangzhou University , Yangzhou 225002, China.
authors.forename: Jingguo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hu
keywords: CuO/ZnO@Au; branched heterostructure; photocatalytic hydrogen production; photogenerated carrier transfer; plasmonic photocatalyst