Well–Steered Charge–Carrier Transfer in 3D Branched CuxO/ZnO@Au Heterostructures for Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

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.