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Construction of amorphous carbon-coated alpha-Fe2O3 core–shell nanostructure for efficient photocatalytic performance

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Abstract

Hetero-structured semiconductor composite as an ideal multifunctional photocatalyst has significant advantage for the improvement of photocatalytic efficiency. Here, core–shell hetero-structured α-Fe2O3@Carbon (α-Fe2O3@C) composite including of α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles (NPs) inner-core and amorphous carbon outer-shell was successfully synthesized via a simple hydrothermal method. The experiment results indicate that the present core–shell structure has a remarkable impact on the interfacial synergies. The possible photocatalytic mechanism of core–shell α-Fe2O3@C composite is investigated in detail. Thanks to the following advantages: the core–shell structure provides more heterogeneous interfaces, so the incident light would be reflected multiply and enhanced the light absorption capacity. In addition, the heterogeneous interface synergistic effect between amorphous carbon and α-Fe2O3 as the bridge gives rise to a rapid approach to transport photo-induced carriers and thus enhances the electronic transfer capacity. It is anticipated that the core–shell nanostructure provides a neoteric mentality for designing superior photocatalysts with outstanding advantageous features applicable to, among others, hydrogen generation, green energy, water splitting, etc.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Special Talents in Shanxi Province (Grant No. 201901D211074), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21671147)

Funding

Special Talents in Shanxi Province,201901D211074,Jianle Xu,National Natural Science Foundation of China,21671147,Shuang Wang

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Information and Computer, Center of Nano Energy and Devices, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, 030024, People’s Republic of China

    Jianle Xu, Qing Yao & Pengwei Li

  2. College Environmental Science & Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, 030024, People’s Republic of China

    Jianle Xu, Xiao Zhang & Shuang Wang

  3. School of Physical Science and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, People’s Republic of China

    Jianle Xu & Chunxu Pan

Authors
  1. Jianle Xu
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  2. Qing Yao
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  3. Pengwei Li
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  4. Xiao Zhang
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  5. Shuang Wang
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  6. Chunxu Pan
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Contributions

JX contributed to conception and experiment design. JX and QY contributed to experiment operation, acquisition of data, analysis, and interpretation of data. PL and SW contributed to acquisition of data and drafting the article. JX and XZ contributed to revising article critically for important intellectual content. JX contributed to analysis and interpretation of data. CP contributed to experiment design.

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Correspondence to Jianle Xu, Shuang Wang or Chunxu Pan.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. In this experiment, we did not collect any samples of human and animals.

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Xu, J., Yao, Q., Li, P. et al. Construction of amorphous carbon-coated alpha-Fe2O3 core–shell nanostructure for efficient photocatalytic performance. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 33, 22549–22559 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-022-09033-8

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