Abstract
Construction of hollow anisotropic semiconductor nanostructures that possess excellent crystallinity, a flexibly tunable structure/morphology and aqueous dispersity is of special interest for many promising applications such as photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting, but has long been hindered by great synthetic challenges. Here we report a powerful and widely applicable approach to fulfill this vision based on cation exchange-induced oxidative etching. Aqueous cation exchange is utilized to chemically convert the shells growing around the shape-controlled Ag templates (such as 2D Ag triangle nanoprisms) into desired semiconductor components (MS, M = Cd and Zn). Remarkably, we found that the soft base ligand used to initiate the cation exchange process can simultaneously induce oxidative etching of the Ag domain forming anisotropic Ag@MS core-shell hybrid nanocrystals, Ag@MS partially hollow hybrid nanocrystals with a controlled degree of hollowness, and hollow MS nanocrystals, depending on the strength of oxidative etching. The resulting core-shell or hollow nanoprisms all exhibit well-defined geometry and crystallinity/interface properties, and this is presumed to be the major reason for their highly efficient performance as the photoanode materials for PEC hydrogen generation.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 8061-8072 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Journal of Materials Chemistry A |
Volume | 7 |
Issue number | 14 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |